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The Hounded Man 







The 

HOUNDED MAN 

by I 

FRANCIS CARCO 

it 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS SELTZER 
1924 




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e \n r \^ 

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Copyright, 1924, by 
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. 


All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


JAN 1B '25 ^ 


©C1A815617 V 



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The Translation of this book 
was made by 
ALEX JORAND 





TO 

BOURGET 


PAUL 




The Hounded Man 



At dawn y having lined up his four hatches 
of bread and crescent buns y still warm y on the 
shelves of the shop y Lampieur went up to his 
room y and y with the whole weight of his 
weariness upon him y he sometimes managed 
to sleep. But when Lampieur awoke his 
anguish awoke with him. It gave him no 
rest. 

Then the man threw hack the covers y got 
up y put on his old slippers y and opened a little 
skylight in the roof to breathe the outside 
air. A thousand noises reached him. He 
identified them y one by one y from the rumble 
of the busses which shook the houses of Rue 
Rambuteau against his own y down to the 
tinkle—so feeble and yet so clear—of a bell 
on a distant peddler’s cart. 

Lampieur listened to these sounds like a 
man who has lost his bearings y and seeks an 


ii 


The Hounded Man 


answer in the slightest sign. And the 
sounds of the street did answer him. They 
reassured him. They told him that soon he 
would go down and mingle in their mechani¬ 
cal whirly in their fires, in their lights that 
were beginning to shine in shop windows, in 
their ceaseless vibrations. 

Still Lampieur was in no hurry to leave 
his room. Each time he opened his door 
he felt what was almost fear at the thought 
that there was someone lurking behind it, 
waiting for him. ... It robbed him of 
all assurance. And yet he could see that the 
hall leading to the stairs was empty, that no 
one barred his way. 

“Let's go!" he said to himself, and 
hurriedly he closed the door behind him, 
and, carefully watching his movements, he 
hurried to the street and lost himself in the 
crowd. 


12 


Chapter i 

F OR three weeks the police had been 
searching for the Rue Saint Denis mur¬ 
derer, and every night of those three weeks 
Lampieur had punctually taken himself to 
a little saloon near the Market, where he was 
well known. 

“Ah, here comes Monsieur Frangois!” the 
host would call out. “Always on the 
dot. . . . It’s a pleasure!” He would 

stand two wine glasses on the bar, fill them 
with white Bordeaux, raise his to his cus¬ 
tomer’s health, and swallow the glassful at 
one draught. 

It was that dead hour of the day preceding 
the arrival of the early evening crowd. A 
few shabby clients sat on the benches with 
their half-pint of beer, spread out the butts 
they had collected, and rolled cigarettes from 
13 


The Hounded Man 


the contents. Others munched the remain¬ 
ders of lunches they had brought wrapped 
up in old newspapers. Near the door an 
old woman who was known as “Everybody’s 
Mother” stared into the street, watching for 
the arrival of fresh clients from whom she 
begged, with a certain dignity. 

It was a strange dive, narrow as a hallway, 
filthy, filled with a clammy dampness. But 
it was not without color at night, when hat¬ 
less, crudely painted prostitutes came in to 
warm themselves at the stove, mingling with 
the derelicts who were its most distinguished 
clientele. There could be found Renee, 
always wearing the same sweater, Madame 
Berthe with her eternal umbrella, Gilberte 
the consumptive, fat Therese, Yvette, Gaby, 
Lilas of Brittany, and Leontine who was said 
to have run away from home because she 
wanted to “see life.” 

Lampieur knew several of these girls. 
Every night on his way to work, he passed 

14 


The Hounded Man 


them where they stood near a dingy hotel. 
Sometimes they said “Good evening.” 

“Good night,” he would answer, and 
pursue his way past the rows of shuttered 
shops, pretending not to notice their man¬ 
euvers. 

Midnight still found them at their post, 
stamping their high heels on the sidewalk. 
Much later, five or six of them, walking up 
Rue Saint Denis, would crouch in front of 
the sidewalk grill of the bakery and ask for 
a piece of fresh bread. They had a string 
with which one after the other lowered pen¬ 
nies down to the baker, who took his money 
and replaced it with a chunk of bread. 

Lampieur hated these girls. He was of¬ 
fended by their shrill brazen voices calling 
to him from the sidewalk, by their presence 
on the street at an hour when only policemen, 
solitary passers-by, drunks and those peculiar 
moving shadows of the night that seem in¬ 
corporeal, are abroad. It was intolerable. 
15 


The Hounded Man 


Besides, these wretches disturbed him in his 
work and always left him somberly irritated. 

What did they want? “All right, all 
right, Pm coming. You don’t have to make 
such a racket!” All for a dime’s worth of 
bread! He wasn’t obliged to serve them! 
And what were they doing now, instead of 
pulling up their string? 

“My god! Do I have to carry it up to 
you?” Lampieur exclaimed. 

He hated the sight of that string dangling 
down the wall as though there was nothing 
holding it above. It reminded him of the 
horrible night when, returning to the cellar 
in which he had his bakery, he had found it 
hanging motionlessly from the grill. . . . 
Who had let it down during his absence? 
Lampieur did not dare ask himself the ques¬ 
tion. He had stared at it open-mouthed, 
incapable even of thought, trying to pull 
himself together. At last he had picked up 
the end of the string from the floor and tied 
a chunk of bread to it. Then he had put it 
1 6 


The Hounded Man 


out of his mind. Later someone had come 
and had pulled it up, silently, in the 
rain. . . . 


“What a night!” remarked Madame 
Berthe, shaking her umbrella. 

She came to the stove where Gilberte sat 
coughing. 

“Have a gin?” asked big Therese. 

“Yes,” said Gilberte in a dead voice. 

“How about you?” asked Leontine of 
Yvette and Lilas, whose mannerisms she was 
trying to imitate. 

Lampieur, leaning against the bar, watched 
them as they accepted. 

They were the cause of all his anguish. 
One of them, he did not know which, knew 
that he had been away from the bakery the 
night of the crime, at the very hour men¬ 
tioned in the newspapers the next day. 

How could such a glaring clue have failed 
to awaken these women’s suspicion? At first 
17 


The Hounded Man 


Lampieur had thought himself lost. If he 
did not betray himself by running away, it 
was certainly less by a process of reasoning 
than because he lived so close to the scene of 
the tragedy. A strange power kept him invin¬ 
cibly on the spot. Not that he already felt 
the need to look again at the entrance to the 
house, with its brown door, its long and com¬ 
monplace hall and, at the far end, the glass 
of the door through which he had broken into 
the concierge’s room. . . . He would have 
gone far out of his way rather than pass that 
house. It was a much more subtle and elu¬ 
sive thing that forbade him to leave the 
neighborhood or to change in any way his 
ordinary routine. 

“All right, one for me too. That makes 
three,” ordered Leontine. 

Leontine was almost a child, or rather one 
of those puny people one meets in large 
cities, faded before ever having bloomed, 
who at twenty look either sixteen or thirty, 
and never age any more. Small and shab- 
18 


The Hounded Man 


bily dressed, with her serious little face under 
the powder and rouge, and her silent and 
attentive air, she was unlike any of her com¬ 
panions. 

Lampieur watched her. . . . Was 

she the one? He could not tell. But as he 
watched her, without betraying the torment 
of his mind, as he studied each expression 
and gesture, he began to notice her pleasant 
face, her blue eyes ringed with black, the 
gentle and submissive way she had toward 
Lilas the Breton and Yvette—this last a 
coquette whose expensively dressed black 
hair was kept in permanently alluring order 
with a net. 

“Which one?” wondered Lampieur. 

He suffered. He was powerless before 
them, and without hope of ever catching any 
reassuring sign. Yet what would he not 
have given to know how he stood with the 
one girl who had only to speak a word to 
have him arrested! Would she say that 
word? Why hadn’t she done so already? 
19 


The Hounded Man 


What were her reasons? Lampieur could 
not guess. But by keeping silence—and at 
times it seemed to him she must have de¬ 
cided to do so—this girl became his accom¬ 
plice, and had him at her mercy. 


20 


Chapter 2 


MPIEUR lived in perpetual uncer- 



1 j tainty, haunted, tormented, terrified. 
Yet it was not his crime that obsessed him. 
He scarcely ever thought of that now. And 
when he did happen to think of the old 
woman he had throttled to death in her little 
room for the sake of the rent money she had 
collected, he felt no remorse. He saw 
nothing but the money. And he congratu¬ 
lated himself on the perfect hiding place he 
had made for it—a hole in the bakeshop 
wall, plugged up again and the surface 
powdered with flour, exactly like the rest of 
the wall. Nobody would ever find it. He 
was sure of that. He alone knew the spot, 
and this knowledge was at times like a miracu¬ 
lous balm when his nerves were racked their 
tightest. 


21 


The Hounded Man 


He had played a lone hand throughout; 
and yet, through a single oversight, someone, 
still shrouded in mystery, had the power to 
step in and claim the price of silence. How 
much would he want? Or rather, having 
stopped to consider, would he not end by 
refusing so dangerous an alliance, and instead 
reveal to the police the damning coincidence 
of the baker’s unexplained absence from his 
shop at the very hour the crime was supposed 
to have been committed? A simple coinci¬ 
dence, people would say. All right, but how 
allay suspicion and keep the police from in¬ 
vestigating so promising a clue? Lampieur 
despaired at the thought of it. Moreover, 
the trail once taken, discovery was inevitable. 
There was no lack of evidence. And what 
damning evidence! There was the little 
servant girl to whom, just three months be¬ 
fore, the concierge Lampieur had killed had 
naively complained of having so much 
money to carry. Another servant, waiting 
to be served in the bakeshop, had not failed 


The Hounded Man 


to scold her for her carelessness, and the 
bakery woman had joined in. 

“Hide your money, Madame Courte!” she 
had said between her teeth. 

“There’s certainly a lot of it. . . . Just 
think!” the other had answered. 

And Lampieur, who had been arranging 
his bread on the shelves of the store recalled 
the yellow brightness of that winter morn¬ 
ing when, without any serious thoughts as 
yet, the idea of an old woman carrying sev¬ 
eral thousand francs in her purse had filled 
him with a somber astonishment. 


What could he answer to all this if once 
it were mentioned? He had no answer. 
And Lampieur trembled between the fear 
that he would some day have to face the 
question and the hope, still vague and un¬ 
certain, that he might be spared. Who 
could suspect him? His conduct heretofore 
had been beyond reproach. Never had 

23 


The Hounded Man 


there been the slightest complaint from any 
of his customers. Moreover, he was not one 
of those workmen who are perfectly con¬ 
scientious at their work, but lead dubious 
personal lives, frequenting concerts and 
dance halls. He never went to such places. 
As for old man Fouasse’s saloon near the 
market, where he had his daily glass of wine 
before dinner, he was an old friend of the 
house and Fouasse himself, if called upon, 
would have sworn that not once in all the 
years he had been a customer, had Lampieur 
been drunk. 

Moreover, to look at Lampieur, with his 
close-cropped head, his trousers hitched up 
tightly by a suspender used as a belt, his 
blue-striped vest, his body already bent, his 
enormous hands, his powerful rounded 
shoulders and his serious expression, no one 
would guess that behind such an appearance 
could lurk anything but a gruff honest man, 
of about forty, and without any conversation. 
In fact, he never spoke. He listened to some 
24 


The Hounded Man 


complaining of the scarcity of cigarette butts, 
to others complaining about their jobs, and 
about the police. . . . He listened and 

watched. No one paid any attention to him 
excepting when he put his glass down on 
the bar and called: 

“Barkeep! Another of the same!” 

This habitual reserve, impervious to the 
most excited questioning, stood him in good 
stead now when Monsieur Fouasse, having 
finished his evening paper, began to explain 
his theories of the crime. 

“Sure, sure,” Lampieur would answer. 

“Just you watch, now, Monsieur Frangois 
. .” the saloonkeeper would continue. 

“Just you watch and see if they don’t have 
the rogue in no time.” 

“Ah!” 

“Yes! How much will you bet?” 

Lampieur was not betting. He would 
nod his head and, with a slow movement that 
looked natural enough even though there 
was no great assurance behind it, he would 
25 


The Hounded Man 

raise his glass of white wine and take a 
sip. 

“Well, no, they won’t get him,” the saloon¬ 
keeper would declare. “Because a job like 
that, right at the very Market, was certainly 
no cinch! Do you want to know what I 
think? I think he didn’t do it alone. There 
must have been two of them. Or else he 
had a woman for a lookout.” 

“A woman?” 

Monsieur Fouasse shrugged his shoulders. 

“Exactly!” he declared. “A woman! 
And if ever they nab him, don’t look any 
farther. You’ll see. It’ll be because of 
a woman. It always is.” 

“Always,” the murderer repeated after 
him and then, finishing his glass, he walked 
away with heavy tread, his mind reeling in 
black bewilderment, wondering whether he 
should continue to look for the woman to 
whom fate had forever bound his destiny. 


2 6 


The Hounded Man 

Lampieur had only to descend to his base¬ 
ment and find himself alone there with his 
oven, his kneading-trough, his basket moulds 
piled one inside the other against the wall, 
for the thought of the girl to return and 
torment him. She did not present herself 
like someone rising from a corner and ad¬ 
vancing toward him. But she was there, in 
a corner of his mind, seated, silent, motion¬ 
less. She seemed to be waiting. Each time 
Lampieur noticed her presence, he was 
troubled. What was she waiting for? Buck 
up! He wasn’t going to be scared. That 
was stupid. He would line up his moulds, 
sprinkle two or three soft handfuls of flour 
into them before slapping in the nicely 
measured dough: he would come, he would 
go, pile more wood in the oven, and drive 
all thoughts from his mind. It was a mis¬ 
take to let himself be stampeded that way. 
Wasn’t he man enough to pull himself to¬ 
gether? Hanging to a nail in front of him, 
his watch ticked off the hour. Lampieur 
27 


The Hounded Man 


weighed his dough, kneaded it. His mind 
was a blank. The oven was getting 
warm. . . . 

Down in his cellar, little by little, the man 
forgot his anguish, forgot everything but 
the hour that slowly advanced through the 
night to the steady tic-tic-tic of his watch. 

Then the image would come back. It was 
announced by a sort of a sudden vague anx¬ 
iety that crept over Lampieur, and made 
him attentive to the slightest sound. She 
was coming back. She was irresistible. And, 
if he tried to fight back her sinister clutch, 
she made effective use of the slightest noise 
behind his back, or the faintest echo of foot¬ 
steps pacing the sidewalk, to strike terror into 
the very heart of his anguish. 

Down in his cellar Lampieur could see 
nothing, and he dared not wonder who might 
be walking by or perhaps stopping at the 
sidewalk grill. He thought of what Fouasse 
had said. The certainty that a woman is 
always mixed up in the failure of the most 
28 


The Hounded Man 


carefully planned job, just as the saloon¬ 
keeper had said, robbed him now of all desire 
to know this woman. Alas! Why should 
there be a woman up there, in front of the 
shop? Lampieur could hear her walking. 
What did she hope for? What was making 
her pace up and down over his head, without 
ever moving away? What was she trying to 
do? Was she trying by her nightly presence 
to force him to come out and compromise 
himself? Lampieur felt that if he gave in 
to this woman’s will he would be lost—not 
so much because of his abandoning his work 
to approach her as because of the morbid 
need he felt at such moments to speak to 
her and to come to a showdown. 

Already, when he was in the saloon near 
those girls whom he suspected one after the 
other, he had to make an effort not to ad¬ 
dress them as he now wanted to so much. 
What would he say to them? No, no, it 
was only a whim, one of those crazy whims 
that must be fought back at once if they are 
29 


The Hounded Man 


not to lead inevitably to disaster. Lampieur 
realized this. He pulled himself together. 
He must be crazy to allow himself to be 
tempted that way. He must be mad. He 
was losing his mind. Or else was he liv¬ 
ing wide awake in a dream? 

That was the impression he had on certain 
nights when, under the spell of an influence 
he could not understand, he pictured the com¬ 
ings and goings of his mysterious accomplice 
around the sidewalk grill. Certainly, on the 
night of the crime she must have prowled that 
way, astonished at first to find no one down 
below in the bakeroom, then beginning to 
wonder why there was no one there, crouch¬ 
ing, calling, dropping the pennies on the end 
of the string, looking again through the grill 
to see if the man who always answered was not 
perhaps asleep. How long had she waited? 
In the end, she must have gone away. Had 
she returned before he got back to his cellar? 
Lampieur would have liked to believe it. But 
what if she had gone through the maneuver 
30 


The Hounded Man 


several times, and yelled to make herself 
heard? He shuddered at the thought that 
some passer-by, perhaps even a neighbor, 
witnessing the whole scene, might have gone 
in secret a few days later to tell the police. 

There was nothing impossible about that. 
In that case this girl who patrolled in front 
of the shop was working for the police. Her 
purpose became clear. She was laying a trap. 
She wanted to lure Lampieur to the street. 
Once face to face with her, how could he 
help betraying himself? There was no man 
living who could defend himself in a situa¬ 
tion like that. Of course, Lampieur had 
only to deny that he was out at all the night 
of the crime. Who had seen him? It was 
very simple: he had gone to sleep in the 
woodshed beside the bakeroom. Anyone is 
likely to get tired. Especially on a night 
job like his, so hard that practically all the 
bakeries had discontinued it. Could anyone 
prove he hadn’t been asleep in the other cel¬ 
lar as he said? Lampieur had no other de- 
31 


The Hounded Man 


fence. He would stick to this one through 
everything. 

But why should he have to defend himself 
at all? Nobody was accusing him. More¬ 
over, when he began to leave his bakeroom 
now and then for a drink in Fouasse’s saloon, 
with the confused notion of manufacturing 
an alibi after the fact, there was no one 
abroad. Lampieur could not believe his 
eyes. He would have sworn that someone 
was there, as on every other night. Was 
it possible? The empty street with its shin¬ 
ing sidewalks, its arclights, the closed fronts 
of its houses, opened wide before him, and 
it was not until he reached the Market that 
he met the first of the girls on their nightly 
patrol. 


32 


Chapter 3 

T HE days and nights followed thus 
crazily. Lampieur, who was counting 
them, could not tell them apart for the hor¬ 
rible feeling that they were still the same day 
and the same night, dragging with them the 
same black misery. February was coming 
to a close. It rained day and night, stopping 
only at rare intervals. All Paris waded 
through a liquid mud that the cartwheels 
splashed right up to the housefronts like 
black rocket fire. Every view was blurred, 
and the hurrying crowds made endless pro¬ 
cessions of umbrellas. Lampieur took to 
rising late. He would leave his room about 
six o’clock, not knowing what to do with him¬ 
self. The rain-spattered windows of the 
deserted Market shone in the dull glow of 
the street lights. The place exuded a cold 
33 


The Hounded Man 


and bitter sea smell that filled the neighbor¬ 
ing streets where one and sometimes two 
days’ accumulation of garbage clogged the 
running gutters. 

The air at Fouasse’s was so poisoned with 
the smell of damp tobacco pipes and musty 
decrepitude that it was choking. Lampieur 
was used to it. It did not bother him. In 
fact he breathed it in with the delight of a 
man emerging from a nightmare into his old 
familiar world. 

Every time he went into the old dive 
Lampieur saw Leontine coming in or going 
out and each time, at the glance she threw 
him, he found it difficult to suppress the 
wonder he felt at finding her so constantly 
on his tracks. He noticed that she was al¬ 
ways alone when he met her, and that she 
no longer looked the same. What was the 
matter with her? he wondered. Her eyes 
seemed to have grown. He could see noth¬ 
ing else in her little face, and they burned 
feverishly, with a sad expression of weari- 
34 


The Hounded Man 


ness and bewilderment. Lampieur was well 
aware of this, but he was suspicious of his 
impressions, and steadfastly refused to at¬ 
tribute these increasingly frequent meetings 
to anything but coincidence. Yet he could 
not help feeling she was trying to communi¬ 
cate with him. What could she want of 
him? And, if she really had something to 
say, why did she go about it in such a pe¬ 
culiar, mysterious way? Lampieur did not 
dare make a guess. He hesitated. He was 
afraid of Leontine. And, as the time for 
him to go to work approached, his fear be¬ 
came more and more difficult to fight, and 
he no longer knew how to resist the woman’s 
subtle influence. 

From now on it was no longer a mere idea 
that stirred fearsome ghosts in his mind and 
drove him to self-tormenting stratagems. 
The image of Leontine now joined in the 
peace-shattering work. He saw her every¬ 
where. The obsession was taking visible 
form. It had a face and body, and they 
35 


The Hounded Man 


were those of Leontine with her wide and 
spell-bound eyes, her walk, her mannerisms, 
her obstinate gentleness, the pained bewilder¬ 
ment one read in her countenance. Every 
now and then she stood solidly before him. 
And, at the very moment when he saw her, 
when he knew that he had only to put out 
his hand to touch her, Lampieur could hear 
her pacing up and down on the sidewalk out¬ 
side, and could clearly recognize her step. 

“What’s this? What’s this?” he stam¬ 
mered in a fury. 

He would then try to regain his spirits 
and put an end to the terror that haunted the 
very depths of his soul. But he didn’t have 
the breath ... he was shaking like a 
leaf. Sweat poured from him. He feared 
that, even were he capable of calling her, 
she would not answer. Nevertheless he did 
not doubt for a moment that she was stand¬ 
ing up there, in front of the shuttered shop. 
It was she who paced up and down there, 
she and no other. As soon as night fell a 
36 


The Hounded Man 


morbid need must possess her to walk up 
the street, to prowl like a soul in pain around 
the bakeshop, to approach the grill, choose 
a spot on which to stand motionless, for 
hour after hour. . . . Why shouldn’t 

she answer if he called? Perhaps she was 
waiting to be called. What was there to 
prevent Lampieur from calling? Where 
was the risk? He would risk nothing. Be¬ 
sides, he didn’t have to call Leontine by 
name. He had only to make some sort of 
a cry, or to whistle. She would understand. 
She would stoop down and he could say: 

“Well, what do you want?” 

So arguing Lampieur moved away from 
the grill, filled with an indescribable excite¬ 
ment at the temptation to call the girl. He 
paced his cellar with great strides, and at 
last resumed his work. The most sanguine 
thoughts came to him in hordes, and he 
clutched at them like a drowning man snatch¬ 
ing at anything within reach. But they were 
frail straws to keep him above water. 
37 


The Hounded Man 


They could not support him for long. They 
broke or eluded his grasp, and a few more 
treacherous ones got tangled about him and 
fettered him. Lampieur still snatched at 
them, in vain. In vain did he bring the full 
force of his obstinacy to bear on the obsession. 
Soon he returned to Leontine, and some 
abominable thought that, a few minutes be¬ 
fore, he had welcomed for the hope it seemed 
to offer, now tormented him as though it 
were decreed that he should go through the 
worst agonies of fear and approaching mad¬ 
ness. 

What was this voice that whispered to 
him, “That isn’t Leontine up there. . . 

It isn’t she. . . . Perhaps it’s someone 

else. . . . Perhaps it’s no one. . . . 

Go and see! Go on up! You were mis¬ 
taken. . . . There never was anybody. 

Why should you think the watcher hid her¬ 
self? It’s nothing but the sound of the rain. 
. . . Listen! Don’t you hear some¬ 

thing? Listen! Listen! What’s that 

38 


The Hounded Man 


noise? You can’t stay here in uncertainty. 
. . . Go on! Go on up!” 

“Go on up! ” the voice commanded. 

Lampieur would not go up. A shadow, 
the shadow of his terror, staggered about, 
bumping into the walls. He followed it 
with burning eyes. It enveloped him in a 
maze of steps, stumbled, rose, leaned against 
the kneading-trough, tried to climb it to 
reach the grill and flee. Was it the shadow 
that had spoken? It was silent now. It 
scuttled about in a nightmare silence in which 
a thousand sounds seemed to jostle noise¬ 
lessly there, right in front of him, a thousand 
sounds that he could not hear, that neverthe¬ 
less resounded within him with a gruesome 
clamor. 

Still Lampieur held his ground, and re¬ 
fused to go and see who stood in the street 
for, had he found no one, as the voice had 
whispered, every hope of escaping the lurk¬ 
ing madness he sensed all around him would 
fade, and he would no longer have the 
39 


The Hounded Man 


strength to do anything to save himself. No, 
he would not go out to look. He would not 
go! What torture! He would not go!. 
For a moment the sense that he had con¬ 
quered himself filled him with a sort of un¬ 
happy triumph. 

It was, however, nothing but a respite in 
the endless fight. At each return of his 
obsession Lampieur retreated, step by step, 
and each time he lost irrecoverable ground. 
Every moment of calm was followed by an¬ 
other crisis, more deadly than the last, that 
wore him out as falling water, drop by drop, 
eats away a stone. His will was dwindling. 
Lampieur was only too sure that some night, 
he could not say when, he would give in to 
a will more obstinate than his own and go 
up, out to the street, and find out for certain 
whether someone were really there. 


40 


Chapter 4 

I T WAS really Leontine who paced the 
street above the bakeroom. Lampieur 
had seen her from behind the shutters of the 
shop. He was now waiting, motionless, for 
her to return silently again, as she had done 
before. . . . The girl suspected noth¬ 

ing. She walked stooping in the rain. Her 
clothes were soaking. Her shoes were full 
of water, but she seemed not to notice it, 
she was so weary and incapable of thought. 
One single fixed idea led her, drove her, 
forced her to advance noiselessly toward the 
shop. Lampieur, who was waiting for the 
moment when she would pass the place, 
could not hear her step. It was strange. 
He wondered how he had been able to recog¬ 
nize her step from the cellar, since she now 
moved like a shadow. A few moments ago 
41 


The Hounded Man 


she had almost frightened him with this 
startling way of slowly moving, of gliding 
rather than walking, and of suddenly merg¬ 
ing into the night. How far down the 
street would she go before retracing her 
steps? Lampieur had no idea. He could 
only make a thousand guesses and remain 
rooted to his place with bated breath, without 
making a single movement for fear of re¬ 
vealing to Leontine that she was being 
watched. 

How long she took to return! Lampieur 
was wretched with disappointment and mor¬ 
bid anxiety. The crack in the shutter showed 
him a narrow field of sidewalk, directly in 
front of the shop door, and nothing else. 
Had Leontine halted just outside his field 
of vision? He strained his ears in vain. He 
could scarcely distinguish faintly in the 
sounds that came from around the Market 
the rumble of the marketmen’s heavy rigs 
or the sudden startling shriek of a motor 
horn. At times a cold, damp wind whistling 
42 


The Hounded Man 


through the shutters, drove the rain against 
them. The shadow of a street lamp writhed 
on the sidewalk. The man could hear and 
see nothing else. The street was deserted. 
Nothing moved in it but the wind. Even 
the wind fell at times and the lonely rain 
fell very straight, silent, close, indifferent, 
as if from time immemorial it had chosen 
this very day and this banal sleeping street 
wherein to bury itself. 

Watching it drop from the sky without 
troubling the silence, Lampieur little by 
little lost all control over himself. An ap¬ 
prehension born of his desire to see Leontine 
and of the failure of his vigil, kept him from 
remembering why it was he stood there be¬ 
hind the shutters, straining his very soul 
toward some nameless thing, that was per¬ 
haps no more than a dream. Of course he 
had a definite objective, and doubtless he 
would reach it. But after that, what? 
When the girl came, would he go to her? 
Would he speak to her? . . . He was 

43 


The Hounded Man 


still tormented by the words of Fouasse— 
“If ever they nab him, don’t look any fur¬ 
ther. You’ll see. It’ll be because of a 
woman. It always is. . . Lampieur 

repeated the sentence. Each word, each let¬ 
ter was deeply graven in his memory. What 
would he do? And, having given in to the 
obsessing need to know who paced up and 
down on the sidewalk, could he be sure now 
that he would have the strength not to go 
to the woman, not to reveal to her his an¬ 
guish? He was far from sure. . . . 

And yet if he let her know him, if he changed 
her suspicions to certainities, he was lost. 
Fouasse had warned him without knowing 
it. “If ever they nab him. . . .” As 

though he were reading from a printed page, 
Lampieur spelled out the phrase: 

“If ever they nab him. . . .” 

Couldn’t he understand what it meant? 
It had a meaning, all right. A brutal mean¬ 
ing—he would be nabbed—he, Lampieur. 
44 


The Hounded Man 


. . . Exactly. ... Why not? Had he for¬ 
gotten his crime? That’s right. . . . 

He hadn’t forgotten it, but he didn’t think 
of it—scarcely ever thought of it. In his 
mind, it was less the crime that mingled 
memories with painful thoughts, than that 
disconcerting matter of the string, and the 
complicity in which Leontine was mixed up. 
How could it have happened? Why? It 
was unreasonable. A murderer without re¬ 
morse? He, a murderer, had none. He 
didn’t ever know yet what remorse was. For 
the first two or three days a sort of astonish¬ 
ment had mingled with his fear. Then his 
fear had crowded out every other feeling, 
while he acquired a vague notion that he 
would not be troubled if he continued to 
live as usual. It seemed that something like 
a tacit understanding had been reached be¬ 
tween his conscience and the mechanical force 
of his most fixed habits. And so, having 
nothing more to fear from that quarter, 
Lampieur had begun to think of his un- 
45 


The Hounded Man 


willing accomplice and her denouncing him to 
the police, and he had only one care—to 
escape from her. 

“If they nab him . . he repeated 

almost aloud, “nab him. . . .” The 

thought was intolerable. It harassed him. 
It seemed to mock him, to laugh, to reproach 
him for waiting for Leontine without know¬ 
ing what he wanted to do when she came. 
When he had spoken to her, did he want her 
to denounce him? She was the woman 
Fouasse had meant. Lampieur had no worse 
enemy in the world. Couldn’t he feel it? 
Of course he felt it. He knew it. He was 
convinced of it. But the mood in which 
his thoughts turned lay heavily within 
him, confounding pleasure and horror to the 
point where he could no longer distinguish 
between them, and he savored them both 
with a somber joy. 

If Leontine had appeared at that moment 
Lampieur would certainly have gone to her 
and confessed everything. He had half- 

46 


The Hounded Man 


opened the door of the shop, widening his 
field of vision. But Leontine was not there, 
and Lampieur felt an irritation that grew 
as the time passed, bringing him nothing but 
the indistinct, far-off sounds of the night and 
the occasional hoarse shriek of the little 
engine that was drawing freight cars up 
Boulevard Saint Michel toward the Market. 
Perhaps Leontine had wandered into a bar. 
Perhaps she stood under the monster arc 
lights admiring the great wagons and trucks 
unloading heaps of vegetables at the market 
stalls. Lampieur fancied her frail figure in 
the midst of a busy crowd, staring without 
seeing the people bustling around her about 
their business. How could anything interest 
her but himself? He could not understand 
it. A sort of jealousy came to mingle with 
his irritation—a jealously that was bitter and 
groping, stealthy, cynical, full of distress 
and vagueness, full of dull passion. Lam¬ 
pieur was not fooled by it 5 from the moment 
he saw Leontine and was sure it was she who 
47 


The Hounded Man 


prowled about the bakery every night he had 
felt that this girl belonged to him. A feel¬ 
ing that he did not try to understand made 
him assume rights that he did not yet possess 
over her, but that he nevertheless considered 
unquestionable. But for his crime, would 
Leontine have fallen a victim to this strange 
attraction that drove her and possessed her? 
He could easily see that she would not have. 
Well then, why did she not complete her 
mysterious patrol tonight? Why did she 
not bring to it the obstinacy of other nights? 
Why. . . . 

Lampieur opened the door wide. The icy 
air and the wind-whipped rain struck him in 
the face. He took one step on the sidewalk, 
looked about. . . . Leontine was stand¬ 

ing near the grill, motionless. He could 
see her, pressed to the wall, like a shadow 
he dared not approach. 


48 


The Hounded Man 

“Well?” he called from a distance. 
“Well? What’s the matter?” 

The shadow answered nothing. 

“I am talking to you,” cried Lampieur. 
“Do you hear? Yes. You! I’m talking 
to you! . . . Can’t you hear me?” 

He thought Leontine was going to flee. 

“What brings you here every night?” he 
asked, hurriedly barring her way. He re¬ 
peated, “Every night? . . .” 

He now stood beside her and his arm, put 
out to retain her, dropped. 

“You wouldn’t be coming on purpose to 
bother me?” asked Lampieur after a short 
pause. “Say, I want to know. . . . You 
aren’t by chance trying to annoy me, are 
you? Oh, I know you. It’ll do you no 
good to stand there and play your little 
game. » . . What? You’t better an¬ 
swer me, do you hear? I won’t let you go 
till you answer me.” 

He advanced and stood leaning over her, 
a dark look in his eyes, his fists clenched, his 

49 


The Hounded Man 


breath heavy, a monster of terrified anger. 

“No! No!” gasped Leontine. 

Lampieur gave a sort of hoarse and dis¬ 
concerting laugh. Recovering himself he 
dug into his pockets the two enormous fists 
with which he had seemed ready to strike the 
girl, straightened up and waited. Leontine 
remained silent. She stared ahead of her at 
some vague point, and the terror that gripped 
her made her shake, and bend almost in two 
against the wall where she still leaned. 

“Well?” said Lampieur gruffly. 

He was astonished at having been able to 
keep himself from seizing Leontine and 
shaking her to make her answer. But how 
long was he going to stay like this? He 
gazed at her, studied her with heavy atten¬ 
tion . . . and he was no longer afraid. 

He had mastered his fear. It had disap¬ 
peared. A sense of emptiness, almost as 
though his very soul were absent, made a 
deep, gaping, mysterious hole within himself, 
around which every thought seemed seized 
50 


The Hounded Man 


With dizziness and disquiet—everything but 
his own consciousness, and, when he turned 
his attention to Leontine, he felt even more 
strongly that he had somehow become a 
great gap into which he had to tumble an 
immense weight. ... It was this weight 
that pressed upon him and prevented him 
from making any movement or stirring from 
where he stood. It paralyzed all his 
strength, kept it elsewhere, far away, no¬ 
where, outside of space and time, busy at 
the gigantic labor of first starting this weight, 
then moving it, rolling it, poising it on the 
edge of the abyss. . . . Lampieur shook 
himself. 

“You don’t want to talk to me?” he in¬ 
sisted. 

His hands, still in his trousers pockets, 
seemed to him so heavy he could not lift 
them to raise them against Leontine. Why 
bother? The poor girl was getting enough 
as it was. Her teeth were chattering, her 
whole body was shaking, and at times she 
5i 


The Hounded Man 


jerked her head or swung it slowly, by starts 
accompanied with more violent trembling of 
her hands and shoulders. 

“There, there,” said Lampieur, “don’t 
be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.” 

Leontine seemed to be making an effort 
to answer. 

“Me!” exclaimed Lampieur. “Me? It 
isn’t true. ... I don’t want to do any 
harm! It isn’t true . . . it isn’t true. . . .” 

He repeated a third time, so low he could 
scarcely be heard: 

“It isn’t true.” 

And, without knowing very clearly to 
what he had just referred, he felt himself 
suddenly delivered of some nameless obses¬ 
sion, while Leontine, daring at last to look 
at him, clung desperately to his arm which 
he did not withdraw, and burst into tears. 


52 


Chapter 5 


M PI EUR was to remember later the 



1 almost voluptuous feeling he had had 
listening to a woman weep for the first 
time. But, at the very moment when she 
could no longer hold back her tears she was 
still merely Leontine to him, less a woman 
than his accomplice, and he was filled with 
terror. 

“What are you crying for?” he asked. 

He had not foreseen that she might weep 
like this, hanging on to his arm, so hard to 
drag along that she seemed weighted with 
lead. Still he dragged her, carried her. 
He did not want her to remain out in the 
rain. He himself was soaked. A kind of 
pity, mingling with his terror, made light in 
his brain. 

“You mustn’t cry,” he murmured again 


53 


The Hounded Man 


and again. “It doesn’t do any good. . . . 
No. Come, come along.” 

Leon tine allowed herself to be led 3 she 
was at the end of her strength. But for 
Lampieur she would have dropped to the 
ground. But he wasn’t deserting her, he 
hadn’t withdrawn his arm. On the contrary, 
he was supporting her now and she under¬ 
stood vaguely that he was leading her toward 
the bakery. 

“Come . . . come along . . 

Lampieur repeated. 

He pushed open the half-closed door, en¬ 
tered, found a chair on which he placed his 
strange burden. 

“Thank you,” said Leontine. 

She had stopped crying. But she was still 
shuddering and shaking with hiccoughs, and 
unable to control herself. Where was she? 
She did not even wonder. She realized 
simply that she was no longer outside. The 
air was warm and very peaceful. In the 
doubtful light rising from the stairway she 
54 


The Hounded Man 


made out a mirror by its gray and oblique 
reflection, a counter, shelves, two trucks in 
which Lampieur had brought up his first 
batches of bread, a scale. . . . 

“Monsieur!” called Leontine. 

“Pm here,” said Lampieur. 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“Oh! No! I don’t want to,” slowly 
murmured Leontine. 

With a weary gesture she pushed away the 
memories, the thoughts, the images that 
danced before her and that, while remain¬ 
ing meaningless, threatened to assume a 
meaning soon that would revive her torment. 
In the endless maze that whirled before her 
eyes, Leontine was recognizing little by little 
the purpose of all her nights of vigil. She 
could not mistake it. And this thing that 
kept rising out of the deep and troubled 
movements of her conscience—she recog¬ 
nized in it the relentless force that had 
driven her, ever since the night of the crime, 
toward the grill where Lampieur had found 
55 


The Hounded Man 


her a few moments ago. Now she was so 
close she almost touched the very cause of 
her suffering. She was no longer out in the 
street. It seemed to her she must have gone 
some fantastic road from there to here. No 
one could prevent her from rising, from 
walking straight toward the stairway from 
which rose the light of the cellar, from going 
down to the cellar. . . . 

“Where are you going?” cried Lampieur. 

She did not turn her head. An imperious 
force had put her on her feet and led her to 
the center of the shop. From there she 
could see the first steps of the cellar stairs, 
the wall along which a rope held by iron 
brackets served as railing, and the vault of 
the basement. The light rising from down 
there illumined her face. Her eyes reflected 
the light. They sparkled. Lampieur real¬ 
ized that he could not stop her. 

“All right,” he grumbled. “Take hold 
of the rope and lower your head.” 

She took the rope, lowered her head. She 

56 


The Hounded Man 

did exactly as she was told, mechanically. 
Behind her the man walked as though he 
also were obeying the same commands, but, 
while Leontine descended stiffly, like an au¬ 
tomaton, he leaned down and gazed into 
the cellar with an odd feeling of astonish¬ 
ment and stupor. He was haunted by the 
ridiculous idea that he had left some evi¬ 
dence of his crime about. What evidence? 
Was he crazy? Why should he have for¬ 
gotten anything of the kind? Lampieur did 
not know. His glance, turning everywhere 
at once, questioned each object, the walls, 
the floor of beaten earth, the kneading- 
trough, the board that covered it, the cloth 
thrown over the bread pans, the split wood, 
a pair of old slippers, a napkin, some bas¬ 
kets and the rickety stool on which he sat at 
midnight to eat a bit of bread and cheese. 
One by one he examined these things with 
which he lived every night, and found them 
all in their place. Why shouldn’t they be? 
Nobody had anything to do with them but 

57 


The Hounded Man 


himself. Still he studied them with a sus¬ 
picious eye, as though by their disposition 
and the appearance they made they might 
reveal to Leontine the answer she sought 
from them. 

Leontine, standing in the midst of them, 
regarded them, unable to advance farther. 
Her feet seemed rooted to the ground. 
Everything she saw about her entered tu¬ 
multously into her brain, sowing even 
greater disorder there. She could not un¬ 
derstand. She stared. Her suffering seemed 
to be escaping her. It was not pain; it was 
a chaos of sensations and of the most con¬ 
fused ideas; an unreal saraband of images 
and memories; an extravagant rout. . . . 

Doubtless this place was a cellar. There 
was the automatic kneading machine; there 
the grate of the oven; there the pale opening 
of the sidewalk grill, and there, beside her, 
the man who usually was to be found in the 
cellar when she came to buy bread. Since 
Lampieur was in the cellar, what was Leon- 
58 


The Hounded Man 


tine doing there? She had not realized that 
Lampieur would be there. His presence 
upset everything. It absolutely prevented 
her from going back in memory, from fac¬ 
ing herself in order to experience with all 
the horror she expected the sensation of 
again finding the cellar empty, this time by 
actually entering it, as she had seen it the 
night of the crime, when she lowered her 
pennies from the sidewalk. 

“Sit down,” said Lampieur. 

He approached the stool and added: 

“It’s more comfortable near the oven. . . . 
It’s warmer. . . . And then you’ll be 

less in my way.” 

“Yes,” answered Leontine. 

She sat down as he had invited her, and 
watched him put wood into the grate, then 
take off his vest and shirt and draw out the 
baked loaves by twos and threes with his 
broad shovel. 

“All right?” he asked after a long mo¬ 
ment. 


59 


The Hounded Man 


Leontine nodded. 

“On a night like this it’s pretty comfort¬ 
able here,” added Lampieur. 

“It’s comfortable,” she repeated. 

A warm appetizing odor filled the air. 
The odor of burning dry wood, the odor of 
bread. . . . Leontine breathed it in 

deeply. 

“It’s funny,” she added later. “It re¬ 
minds me of when I was a kid ... er¬ 
rands. . . .” 

“Ah!” commented Lampieur, absently. 

He turned. Somewhere a clock was toll¬ 
ing two frail strokes into the night. 

“Speaking of errands,” Lampieur ob¬ 
served, “the others haven’t come.” 

“What others?” 

“Why, for bread,” he murmured. 

“Why,” she asked pensively after a long 
pause, “are you expecting them?” 

“Me?” 

She turned her eyes on him. 

“I’m not expecting them,” said Lampieur, 

6o 


The Hounded Man 


“They come when they like and, naturally, 
when Pm here, they don’t always come.” 

He spoke slowly, halting on each word as 
though, having used it, he had to recapture 
it. But he was troubled, and the words es¬ 
caped him. They came all by themselves 
out of his mouth. 

“Don’t you believe me?” he asked. 

Leontine had no answer $ she didn’t 
know. . . . Why did he ask her such a 

question? 

“All right, all right,” grumbled Lampieur, 
pretending to resume his work, “only . . .” 

He did not finish his sentence. A com¬ 
pact, heavy silence, full of doubt and un¬ 
easiness, fell between him and Leontine. 


6 1 


Chapter 6 


MPIEUR found Leontine at Fouasse’s 



1 j the next day when he came down from 
his room at the usual hour. He did not 
experience the reaction he had expected. He 
felt no uneasiness at meeting her again. In 
fact he was almost pleased to see her; her 
presence seemed to soothe him. Still, what 
did this woman mean to him? Lampieur 
could not have said. It was not she who 
mattered; or rather, it was she, but indi¬ 
rectly; for Lampieur was less conscious of 
Leontine than of the peace of mind he owed 
to her. Strange peace, that has lasted all 
day, that lasted still. Did he understand it? 
All he knew was that he felt more sure of 
himself now thanks to this woman whom he 
knew and from whom he had no reason to 
fear anything. 


62 


The Hounded Man 


Leontine was watching Lampieur from 
where she sat, and he understood that she 
had come there entirely on his account. 
Lampieur wanted nothing better. He real¬ 
ized his power over this girl. Hadn’t he 
hoped to meet her in Fouasse’s? He had no 
more need for introspection 5 he was relieved 
of the compulsion he had felt hitherto to 
torment himself and to multiply, as though 
for his pleasure, the agonies of his fear and 
his imagination. Could it be possible? He 
was filled with a new emotion—a sort of un¬ 
expected joy, detachment, a sense of secret 
deliverance. Lampieur could scarcely be¬ 
lieve it. For the first time since his crime 
everything became simple and natural. He 
could see it. People, things. . . . What 
miracle had transformed the chaos in which 
he had been tossed for so long into this sort 
of small, peaceful and ordered universe? A 
miracle, indeed. It would have taken noth¬ 
ing less. Lampieur was sure of that. Around 
him were the wretched derelicts, the girls, 

63 


The Hounded Man 


the taciturn drinkers who made up the or¬ 
dinary clientele of the saloon. They came; 
they went. Some sought quiet corners in 
which to sit before a glass of wine and empty 
it. Others leaned against the bar. Lam- 
pieur realized with amazement that not one 
of his neighbors paid any attention to him. 

They were the same wretched derelicts 
who could be seen every evening at night¬ 
fall, gathering in the bars around the Mar¬ 
ket for protection against the cold and the 
rain. Lampieur had rubbed shoulders with 
them so often that in their midst he was 
proof against any shock. What fantasies had 
he woven around them? He had mistrusted 
them. He had been uneasy among them. 
As for the women, Fouasse’s speech about 
them was not calculated to improve Lam- 
pieur’s attitude toward them. He couldn’t 
forget that speech. Still, its allusion, proven 
in the person of Leontine, had lost its former 
meaning for him. Pregnant at first with 
a mysterious menace, it had now lost its 
64 


The Hounded Man 


mystery and was no longer really a menace. 
Lampieur would have sworn to that. What 
could Leontine do? She knew nothing def¬ 
inite. There was nothing she could tell. 
He hadn’t confided in her. At the last mo¬ 
ment he had had the strength to restrain his 
speech, to control himself, to raise a sort of 
barrier between himself and the poor girl. 
He remembered it very well. Then Leon¬ 
tine had left. . . . He had accompanied 
her to the door of the store, and no one had 
seen them. 

Thus do things happen in life without 
their balance being shaken or even threatened 
for long. Lampieur was dimly aware of 
this, for if he had gained a sense of self-con¬ 
fidence from his meeting with Leontine, 
it was only by virtue of a more treacherous 
exchange. Eh well! That was the usual 
price of those odd bargains. Lampieur need 
not worry about that. The important thing 
was that he should be free of the trouble 
from which he had suffered, and could begin 

65 


The Hounded Man 


again to live in precarious pleasure. Already, 
without his willing, it was almost a pleasure. 
And for all its unexpectedness he was enjoy¬ 
ing the sense of it, powerless to shake it off. 

“Well?” Monsieur Fouasse asked. 

Lampieur shook the hand extended over 
the counter, and moved up his glass. 

“Wait and have one on me,” said Mon¬ 
sieur Fouasse. 

They clinked glasses. Outside, the street 
lights mingled, and people walking in every 
direction were silhouetted against the win¬ 
dows of the bar. A gray mist, streaked with 
running drops, covered the panes. The same 
damp mist veiled the single brown-framed 
mirror in the room. Muddy streamlets 
meandered among the cigar butts through 
the soft layer of sawdust on the floor, and 
when the door opened at times, an icy 
draught ran among the legs while the noises 
of the street, which had been a confused 
rumble, rose to a resounding uproar. 

“Hey! The door! The door!” yelled 

66 


The Hounded Man 


two or three men to “Everybody’s Mother” 
who, on the point of going out, had detained 
a customer in the doorway. 

Lampieur shook himself. 

“Will you close the door!” put in Mon¬ 
sieur Fouasse. 

And, as the door closed, he said simply, 
“I’d just like to see myself having to say the 
same thing twice in my own place.” 

“Well said!” commented Lampieur ad¬ 
miringly. 

Only the night before it would doubt¬ 
less have mattered to him not at all 
that “Everybody’s Mother” showed herself 
obedient to the bartender’s order. He 
would not have noticed it. But now Lam¬ 
pieur was interested in the slightest event he 
witnessed, and took part in it. 

“So everything is all right,” he said. 

“That’s the way it should be,” answered 
Monsieur Fouasse. 

Lampieur giggled. “That’s the way it 
should be,” he repeated, for his own satisfac- 
67 


The Hounded Man 

tion. No “Everybody’s Mother” had the 
right to trouble the peace with her idiosyn- 
cracies. It was unthinkable. “Order first/’ 
thought Lampieur. By that he meant that 
the weaker must give way to the will of the 
stronger. Otherwise there was no meaning 
in anything. What could he have done, for 
instance, if Leontine had undertaken to re¬ 
sist him? Fortunately, she did not. She 
was easy to lead. She effaced herself. She 
was making herself as small as possible, over 
there, in front of a glass she had not touched. 
Lampieur was grateful to her for it. At 
any rate, this girl would give him no trouble. 
Her thoughts, her suspicions, the morbid 
anxiety visible in her glance, were of no im¬ 
portance. They would eventually change 
of their own accord, and disappear. Lam¬ 
pieur had no doubt of that. Besides, should 
she attempt to follow her desire for terrible 
certainties, Lampieur was determined to 
give her no satisfaction. For her, as for 
him, anything was better than that morbid 
68 


The Hounded Man 


curiosity he knew she felt. Judging from 
the effect it had had on him, such a curiosity 
only complicated things uselessly and drove 
them outside of common bounds. And then 
what? Lampieur had a horrible memory of 
what followed that. 

“Well,” he murmured, reaching in his 
pocket for his purse. 

He paid his bill. 

“Pm through being the way I was,” he 
said to himself. “Good night, boss!” 

“See you again,” answered Monsieur 
Fouasse. 

Outside, Lampieur turned up Rue des 
Precheurs. The fresh air, filled with the 
sea-odors rising from the gutters, filled his 
lungs. 

“It’s all bunk,” he said to himself. 


69 


Chapter 7 

B UNK! It was bunk, in fact, from which 
he had made his escape. But Leontine 
had left the bar after him, and was following 
him without his knowledge. When he en¬ 
tered the restaurant where he took dinner 
every night, she did not dare go farther, and 
waited outside, so that when Lampieur came 
out he met her once more. 

“Ah!” he said, taken off his guard. 

His first impulse, which he did not repress, 
was to take a step backward, and this angered 
him. Then he pulled himself together. 
All around him the lighted shops, the passers 
by, the carriages made a moving arabesque 
of light and shadow before his eyes. 

“Spying on me?” asked Lampieur. 

He pulled down the heavy peak of his 
cap over his eyes. 


70 


The Hounded Man 

“I’m not spying on you,” answered Leon- 
tine. 

Lampieur surveyed the street to the right, 
where he meant to go. He looked at Leon- 
tine and said, shrugging his shoulders: 

“Isn’t it too bad!” in a surly voice. 

Leontine attempted to approach him. 

“Go away!” cried Lampieur. “Go on! 
Beat it! . . . Do I know you?” he 

murmured as he moved past the store fronts. 
“I don’t know you.” 

And, as Leontine said nothing: 

“You’d better not bother me, now!” he 
declared as he started walking again. 

Still Leontine followed Lampieur from 
a distance toward the bakery, and Lampieur 
couldn’t stop her. What was he to do? 
Leontine never turned her eyes from him. 
When she saw him turn, she was all the more 
attracted by his gestures and the anxiety they 
betrayed. At last Lampieur stopped and 
waited for her. What did this girl want of 
him? Was she going to haunt him for ever? 

7 1 


The Hounded Man 


He dared not think of it. It filled him with 
hate and distress. 

“Good God!” he grumbled. 

Vague passers by went up and down the 
street in front of the bars. Some women at 
a hotel door were making signs to them. 
Lampieur turned away. Before him he 
could see the outline of roofs advancing into 
the sky, and, rising above them, the twin 
spires of the church of Saint Leu. 

“What are you following me for?” said 
Lampieur when Leontine came within speak¬ 
ing distance. “Do you want to talk to me?” 

Leontine nodded. 

“Listen,” he murmured between his teeth. 
“Come closer.” 

“Yes. The cops,” she observed with a 
quick glance toward two policemen standing 
near a saloon. 

They passed the policemen. 

“Last night . . .” Leontine began. 

“What?” 


72 


The Hounded Man 


“I didn’t go after you, did I?” she said all 
in one breath. 

“Pm not talking about last night,” coun¬ 
tered Lampieur. “Pm talking about now, 
and I don’t understand your idea of follow¬ 
ing after me the way you’re doing.” 

“It’s not an idea,” said the girl. 

“Yes it is,” said Lampieur. “It’s an idea 
of getting after me to bother me, to do me 
harm, to make trouble. You think I didn’t 
feel it?” 

“I’m in trouble,” murmured Leontine. 

Lampieur scowled. 

“Because I’m in trouble,” she affirmed in 
a dull voice. “And I’ve had it for a long 
time, all right. For days and days. It’s 
there . . . here, see?” 

She touched her breast. 

“Inside,” she exclaimed. “I can’t help it. 
I can’t. It’s impossible. And when you 
yelled to me just now not to follow you, did 
you think I’d listen to you?” 

73 


The Hounded Man 

Lampieur raised an arm, then let it drop. 

“There you are,” said Leontine. “Pd 
like to, but I can’t. It’s stronger than me. 
It drives me. It’s as though I weren’t myself 
any more. . . .” 

She seemed to pull herself together, then: 

“Are you in trouble?” she asked. 

Lampieur did not answer. He fumbled 
a moment with the edge of his cap, and 
stopped. 

“I didn’t think of anything at first, see?” 
continued Leontine, also stopping. “That 
night when I came for bread. I had dropped 
the string and the money. . . .” 

“Sure, I know . . .” painfully articu¬ 

lated Lampieur. 

He looked around with an uneasy, sus¬ 
picious air, and, trying to regain a little as¬ 
surance, he added: 

“I know. I was lying down in the wood¬ 
shed beside the bakeroom and I heard some¬ 
body calling.” 

“I was calling,” explained Leontine. 

74 


The Hounded Man 


“Then you came back?” 

“I came back.” 

JLampieur smiled oddly. 

“I came back two or three times,” 
Leontine continued, “and each time I 
called. . . .” 

Lampieur’s smile stiffened. It strongly 
emphasized the anxiousness of his gaze and 
the fixed serious expression of his motionless 
face. 

“But, the last time you came, you saw 
me?” asked Lampieur. “Was there any¬ 
body else outside?” 

“I was alone,” Leontine admitted. 

“And when you called?” 

“There was nobody but me,” she said. 

Then she added: 

“Only, the next day, there was all that in 
the papers ...” 

“To hell with the newspapers,” Lampieur 
interrupted roughly. “What does that 
prove?” 

He broke into a forced laugh. 

75 


The Hounded Man 


“Eh?” he continued, moving on again. 
“I never read the papers. Don’t pay any 
attention to them. It’s none of my business. 
I haven’t got any time, along with my job. 
What should it matter to me?” 

Leontine pulled at his sleeve. 

“Don’t get angry,” she said fearfully. 

“Well!” Lampieur scolded. “Where do 
you get that stuff? I swear! I’ve had 
enough of that! If I listened to you I’d go 
crazy . . . 

“And wouldn’t you like that?” he added 
with a sort of bitter irony, to free himself 
from the uneasiness he felt. 

At this moment, clinging to the walls and 
seeking safety in the bars, girls hurried by, 
and men raising the collars of their raincoats. 

“A raid!” squeaked a voice. 

Running steps could be heard on the side¬ 
walks. Doors slammed as though at the 
approach of a sudden storm. Then there 
76 


The Hounded Man 


was a moment of silence, and girls could be 
heard calling anxiously to each other. 

“Give me your arm, quick, quick . . .” 

begged Leontine. 

Lampieur obeyed. 

The morals squad was coming. They 
could be seen at street corners, moving 
abreast, and driving their wretched prey 
before them. They came from everywhere, 
forming a chain, pursuing their mysterious 
business. 

“If only we can get by. . . . If only 

we can get by. . . .” Leontine was say¬ 

ing. 

“Why, of course,” said Lampieur. 

He advanced, Leontine on his arm, almost 
dragging her after him, toward the police¬ 
men. 

“Excuse me,” he murmured and, while he 
recited his name and trade, and searched his 
pockets for some means of identification, a 
whistle blew sharply and the line of officers 
broke and let him through. 

77 


The Hounded Man 


“Let’s hurry now,” Lampieur urged. 
“They might bar the street farther up.” 

“Oh dear,” moaned Leontine. “What a 
life!” 

“What a life!” repeated Lampieur. 

He hastened his steps, dragging his com¬ 
panion from Rue Tiquetonne into Grand- 
Cerf alley, which they passed without a 
word. The lane led to other streets, quieter 
and darker. Lampieur and Leontine 
threaded these, without knowing where they 
were going, walking in silence, not daring to 
turn back. At last they reached a secluded 
saloon where they ordered wine, and sat 
down facing each other. Lampieur pulled 
out his watch. 

“That’s the eleventh time in a month,” 
said Leontine. 

“And they’ve never taken you?” 

“No. Never.” 

“The eleventh raid!” commented Lam¬ 
pieur, looking at his watch. 

Leontine added: 


78 


The Hounded Man 


“What are they trying to do?” 

“Nobody knows,” murmured Lampieur. 
“People talk, sometimes.” 

“Think of that!” 

“Why not?” Lampieur insisted, leaning 
toward Leontine. 

She started. 

“Listen,” he warned. 

She was uneasily moving her untouched 
glass over the table and trying to formulate 
a question. 

“They won’t find out anything with their 
raids, you bet,” she confided. “What do 
they ever catch? They’re giving themselves 
a lot of trouble for nothing.” 

“One good catch is enough,” Lampieur 
interrupted. “Suppose they got you . . . 

Eh? Yes, you. That might happen. . . ” 

“I don’t say no.” 

“Well? If it should happen that they 
got you, what would you do?” 

“Me?” 

“They’d question you?” 

79 


The Hounded Man 


“Likely.” 

“Ah, likely. You see? They’d ask you 
questions.” 

“What of that?” countered Leontine. 

“What of that? What of that? . . . 

Why, nothing. . . . Still, all your 

tricks . . . hanging around the bakery 

all the time. . . . You think they 

haven’t noticed?” 

Leontine was trying to make an answer. 

“And then, there’s that notion of yours,” 
said Lampieur in a low reproachful tone. 
“That notion you won’t tell me, that you’re 
keeping to yourself all the time to brood 
over. I’m not blind.” 

“I don’t talk about it ... to any¬ 
one,” Leontine pleaded. 

“But you believe it?” 

“That depends.” 

“Oh, you can’t tell me that,” Lampieur 
declared. “When a woman’s got something 
in her head . . .” 


80 


The Hounded Man 


“What does it matter to you?” Leontine 
demanded. 

Lampieur drew back. 

“All right,” he said, “let’s not talk about 
it . . . it’ll be better that way.” 

He swung back on his chair for a moment, 
pretending to close the conversation. But 
the look he showed Leontine betrayed him, 
and he knew this better than anyone. 

“Let’s not talk about it any more!” he 
grumbled, fighting himself, trying to over¬ 
come his need to learn more. “You’re 
right . . . your notion doesn’t matter 

to me. . . . You’re free. ... I 

don’t have to bother about it . . . 

Only,” he stopped swinging, “if it should do 
me harm some day, I wouldn’t let it. . . .” 

“Come on,” Leontine protested, “don’t 
talk so loud! ” 

Lampieur spoke with emphasis. 

“You’d find me ready,” he said seriously, 
and, laying his enormous hands flat on the 
edge of the table, he crouched in such a 
81 


The Hounded Man 

frightening attitude that Leontine lost all her 
nerve. 

“But,” she stammered, “my idea . . .” 

“As sure as I am here,” he said. “I swear 
it. Understand?” 

Both sat staring at the pale light in the 
bottle and glasses between them, so as not 
to see on each other’s face the expressions 
written there. Leontine was frightened. 
Lampieur terrified her. For all her efforts 
she could not shake off the idea that he was 
the old woman’s murderer. Every allusion 
Lampieur made to it gave it greater force 
and urgency. Without a doubt, Lampieur 
has committed the crime he was denying. His 
manner, his equivocal and furtive attitude, his 
bursts of anger, his violence, everything be¬ 
trayed him. Why was he forever returning 
in roundabout manner to what Leontine 
thought of that tragic affair? Why was he 
so worried by everything relating to the 
crime? An innocent man wouldn’t bother 
about it. He would have the assurance of a 
82 


The Hounded Man 


clear conscience, while Lampieur . . . 

He broke the silence. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, 
without detaching his gaze from its vague 
focus. “Still your notion?” 

“Yes,” she said. 

He put his elbows on the table heavily and, 
dropping his inert, obsessing hands on the 
oilcloth: 

“Go on,” he murmured. 

Leontine rose. Her fright would not let 
her answer. It shook her in a way that was 
painful to see. 

“Oh, well!” said Lampieur. “We’re go¬ 
ing, if your prefer. I’ve got my work to 
do. . . . Wait!” 

He emptied his glass, rose, wiped his 
mouth with a heavy hand, and handed a bill 
to the waiter. 

“Well?” he called when he got outside, 
“Leontine! ” 

She answered with a sigh so weak that he 

83 


The Hounded Man 


repeated, “Leontine!” before joining her at 
the gray housefront where she was watching 
for him. They advanced side by side in the 
street, the prey of a dull uneasiness which 
prevented both from speaking. 

“Don’t go so fast,” Lampieur commanded. 

Leontine began to implore him. 

“Say,” she moaned, “you’re not going to 
torment me more . . . you’re not go¬ 

ing to go and ask me your questions again? 

. . . I’m afraid of you, now. . . . 

Do I know? . . . I’m afraid. 

What are you sore at me for?” 

“I want to know,” he declared. 

Instinctively Leontine put up her arm to 
protect her face. 

“Oh! None of your tricks,” Lampieur 
muttered. “Put down your arm and answer 
me. You think it’s me, don’t you?” 

“I haven’t any idea. . . .” 

“The old woman,” he added in a colorless 
voice. 

Leontine staggered. 

84 


The Hounded Man 

“Don’t be afraid,” Lampieur said, holding 
her up. 

She motioned to him to let her go and, 
leaning against the wall, she gazed vacantly 
about her. Lampieur approached. Then 
she began to breathe heavily as though her 
breath were short. 

Lampieur shook her. 

“I’ll scream,” she warned him, still trying 
to breathe. “I’ll . . . I’ll scream. . . . 
Don’t touch me. . . . Don’ . . .” 

“I will if I like,” he declared. “But I 
don’t want to, see? I don’t want to. . . . 

Go ahead and be scared! ... I don’t 
care. . . . If you knew me, you’d know 

how little I care. ... It doesn’t matter 
to me. . . . And above all, don’t you 

scream. . . . Don’t you go screaming. 

. Here, look. . . .” He put out 

his hands, “You’d better not make a single 
sound, or if you do--” 

He planted himself in front of her. 
Leontine felt herself losing consciousness. 

85 



Chapter 8 

W HEN Leontine came to herself the 
deserted street in which she lay re¬ 
called nothing to her mind. It required a 
long effort to recollect why she should find 
herself in such a place. Rain was falling. 
Leontine took her head between her hands, 
then groped on the ground for her handbag. 
It was wet, and she wiped it on her coat. 
Suddenly she realized that her clothes too 
were wet, and she got up. But she could 
not control her legs. They fled from her. 
They refused to obey. It gave her an odd 
sensation, and she had to lean against the 
wall. Then she remembered dimly having 
leaned against this wall in the same way. 
She collected her wits. She recognized the 
street, and began to tremble in all her mem¬ 
bers, and her teeth chattered. 

86 


The Hounded Man 


“My God! My God!” she moaned. 

She thought Lampieur was still there and 
that, standing in the dark, he was brooding 
over his obscure and tortuous designs. She 
sought him with her eyes. She looked all 
about her and, not seeing him, tried to col¬ 
lect herself.No. Lampieur was 

gone. Leontine looked again, leaned for¬ 
ward. The dim street revealed nothing. 
A strange calm seemed to weigh upon her as 
in a dream. 

“Where are you?” called Leontine. 

Over there, at a distance which seemed to 
her unbelievable, the street opened into an¬ 
other street, where lights shone on the house- 
fronts. Shadows of men could be seen at 
the corner, like a quiet, thick swarm, seeming 
to move and gesticulate automatically. Tar¬ 
paulin covered wagons passed . . . horses 
. . . spokes of wheels. . . . Leon¬ 
tine noticed all these things. . . . She 

named them to herself, and, little by little, 

87 


The Hounded Man 


they began to lose their far-off aspect and to 
assume an almost normal appearance. 

“Why of course, its Rue Dussoubs!” 
Leontine murmured in recognition. 

She started toward this street, which she 
knew, and from where she could take her 
bearings. She moved slowly and painfully. 
The Market rose at her right. She could 
see against the sky its burning bush of light 
through the rain. The sky was alight with 
its glow above the black roofs, and wisps of 
glowing mist floated through the air. 

As she moved toward the corner she be¬ 
gan to feel at home once more in the familiar 
bustle of the Market. She could hear the 
hoarse voices of the rag-pickers putting up 
their carts for the night; storehouses were 
opening up. She passed smoky little saloons 
and dim dank recesses where hand-carts were 
being rented by the hour or by the night. 
Here were hallways with flickering lights, 
and here were the all-night coffee stalls. As 
she mingled with the night-life of the Mar- 
88 


The Hounded Man 


ket she began to feel herself. She watched 
the people, the houses, and forgot Lampieur. 
An immense weariness began to weigh on 
her, and she staggered under it like an over¬ 
loaded beast of burden. 

“Hello, sister,” called out a porter who 
jostled her, bent under an enormous sack. 

“Woof!” cried another. 

“The lady’s fallen!” remarked a third. 

Jeers followed Leontine, but she did not 
hear them. She had only one thought as 
she made her way through the joking crowd, 
and that was to get out of its way and get 
to Fouasse’s by the shortest route. But the 
big fellow standing in a doorway out of the 
rain repeated: 

“The lady fell in the mud.” 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Leontine answered. 

And, as though to apologize for attracting 
attention, she added, “I didn’t hurt myself.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared the stranger. 

Leontine continued on her way. Every¬ 
where about her, in every corner and in every 

89 


The Hounded Man 


bar the vegetable peddlers, laborers, beggar 
women, tattered wretches jostled and scur¬ 
ried. Great trucks moved through this mass 
of humanity and drew up before the plat¬ 
forms without having hurt anyone. Porters 
came up and unloaded the trucks. This one 
contained neatly halved pink pigs; that one, 
carcases of mutton; others, nonchalently 
making their way through the tangle of men 
and traffic, carried piled-up rolls of skins 
and smelled of the slaughterhouse. 

“There!” said Leontine. 

She was in sight of Fouasse’s. Another 
weary block and she was there. 

It was close to midnight, and Fouasse’s 
was usually nearly empty at this hour; but 
the raid had crowded the place, and no one 
dared go out. 

“Leontine! Hey! Leontine!” several 
voices hailed. 

She came to a table where Renee, Madame 
Berthe, fat Therese and Lilas were treating 
each other and whispering together. 

90 


The Hounded Man 


“Where’d you come from?” asked Ma¬ 
dame Berthe, looking her up and down. 

Lilas added: 

“Did the cops make that mess?” 

“Not on your life,” Leontine explained. 
“I slipped and fell getting away from them.” 

“Say,” whispered fat Therese, “they nab¬ 
bed Gilberte.” 

“Ah!” 

“Yvette too,” added Renee, taking a gold 
tipped cigarette from her lips. 

“And Peg-leg Marguerite, who was so 
stuck up,” Madame Berthe announced de¬ 
liberately. “Well, my dear, they threw her 
in like the others.” 

“It makes me sick,” remarked Lilas the 
Breton. 

“That is to say,” Renee declared, pulling 
at the loose sleeves of her sweater, “the dis¬ 
trict’s getting rotten.” 

“You can’t have any peace.” 

“No, you can’t have any peace,” said 
Leontine. 


9i 


The Hounded Man 


She took off her coat, felt it, brushed it 
and hung it over the back of a chair by the 
fire. 

“Sit down,” suggested Madame Berthe. 

She sat down. 

“They’re making it tough since that old 
woman was killed on Rue Saint Denis,” de¬ 
clared Lilas the Breton. “They can’t get 
over that, and we’re the ones that suffer.” 

“Naturally,” assented Madame Berthe. 

“As though they didn’t think the guy who 
did the job put it over on them,” threw in 
fat Therese with admiration. “There’s a 
good chance of that.” 

Leontine said nothing. She was examining 
the folds of her skirt one by one, and looking 
at her shoes under the chair so as not to be 
tempted to join in the conversation. What 
could she add to their complaints? All she 
could do would be to say too much. The 
memory of Lampieur, still pregnant with 
a nameless menace, kept Leontine’s mouth 
closed. After all, it was no more than 
92 


The Hounded Man 


suspicion. She refused to make up her mind. 
No matter how strong her suspicions were, 
they did not prove that Lampieur had killed. 
She might have believed he had . . . 

perhaps she still did. . . . Did that 

mean that she was right, and that Lampieur’s 
life was in her hands? It was too much for 
her. Still, the terror of the recent scene 
with him made her feel a dull resentment 
against him. She was still full of it. But 
this resentment was toward Lampieur the 
man, not toward the murderer. It was none 
of her business if he were a murderer. She 
knew that. It wasn’t for her to interfere. 
Why should she? On principle? She had 
no principles. That was a word with no 
meaning to her, or rather one of odious as¬ 
sociation, since it was used to justify the ac¬ 
tions of the police. Was she going to join 
in their hates? No. She had suffered too 
much at their hands. 

“I’d rather die,” she decided. 

Besides, supposing that some day she de- 

93 


The Hounded Man 


cided to let these gentlemen share some 
purely personal impressions of her own, what 
was there to prove she wouldn’t be the first 
victim? She had no defence. Much more, 
wouldn’t they call her an accomplice for hav¬ 
ing kept quiet so long? It was already too 
late. She would be taken for Lampieur’s 
accomplice 5 willing or not she couldn’t save 
herself from that, or from having to share 
in the retribution. . . . 

“Yes, yes,” Renee declared, “there’s a 
good chance he’s got far away.” 

Leontine shook herself. 

“What do you think about it?” Lilas asked 
her sullenly. 

“I think the same as you,” quickly an¬ 
swered Leontine. 

{ 


94 


Chapter 9 


HAT night’s conversation left Leontine 



X in a sort of chronic despair and dread 
from which she suffered more than one might 
have thought. Now she was as much afraid 
of the police as she was of Lampieur, and she 
cherished her dread without any effort to 
understand it. Wherever she went, she felt 
pursued. Everywhere she saw traps laid 
for her. At Fouasse’s, strangers seemed to 
be watching her. She didn’t like their looks. 
These strangers would disappear after two 
or three nights, following one knew not what 
tangled mysterious trail. On the other hand, 
Lampieur did not return to Fouasse’s. 
Where could he have gone? On several 
evenings Leontine waited for him around 
the little restaurant where he used to eat. 
She waited in vain. He did not appear. 


95 


The Hounded Man 


He must have changed his eating place. It 
was very simple. But in all this there was 
something strange and fearsome which fed 
the girl’s terror. This terror soon became 
so morbid that she evaded the most innocuous 
passers-by, without reason. Everything took 
on an air of suspicion for her. She came to 
the point of considering moving out of the 
district. 

The neighborhood where she had her fur¬ 
nished room, with its crowded avenues and 
its streets conveniently designed for her busi¬ 
ness, suited her well. But in that district, 
as everywhere else, the morals squad makes 
its rounds, and the women they watch have 
few secrets from them. Leontine would 
have been defenceless before them. She was 
alone. She was taking a chance, and that 
chance terrified her. She didn’t believe in 
luck. She was superstitious like all her kind 
and a coward in face of her own thoughts, 
and she could not make up her mind. At 
96 


The Hounded Man 


last she put herself in the hands of fate, and 
remained where she was. 


“Well!” said Lampieur. “It’s you?” 

“Yes,” she answered fearfully. 

He was talking to her from below and 
Leontine, crouched over the grill, was peer¬ 
ing into the cellar. She had dropped a 
string, and called. 

“What do you want?” Lampieur asked. 
“Some bread?” 

“Give me ten sous’ worth,” murmured 
Leontine. 

She saw him lower his head, move back¬ 
ward and disappear, then return. 

“Drop me the money,” he ordered. 

“Well?” asked Lampieur in wonder, as 
she did not move. “What are you waiting 
for?” 

He shook the thin string that Leontine 
had dropped to him, but she let go of it and 
it fell at his feet. 


97 


The Hounded Man 


“What?” he mumbled. 

Leontine waved her hands. 

“I didn’t mean to,” she exclaimed, speak¬ 
ing very fast. “No, I didn’t mean to. It 
dropped when you pulled. . . .” 

Lampieur did not answer. He shook his 
head several times, and his face took on a 
worried air. 

“You don’t think I’d have done it on pur¬ 
pose?” asked Leontine, still talking very fast. 

At last she said, “Can I go down and get 
it?” 

“Come on,” answered Lampieur. 

Leontine clung for a moment to the bars 
of the grill, and her first impulse, when she 
rose, was to flee. But it was useless. She 
opened the door of the bakery, and the bell 
clanged tremendously, it seemed to her. 
Then she closed it behind her and went 
toward the stairs. 

Down in the cellar the light shone on 
things from below. Long rays, as though 
shot from a searchlight, fell on the walls and 
98 


The Hounded Man 


the furniture, leaving the corners in a red¬ 
dish gloom. 

“This way,” called Lampieur. 

A shadow, which suddenly cut off the 
light, moved over the walls. 

“Oh! I know. ... I know. . . .” 
Leontine answered painfully. 

She seized the rope in its heavy iron brac¬ 
kets and descended. 

“Good evening,” she said. 

“Good evening,” said Lampieur. 

Leontine was touched by the gentle voice 
in which he answered, and that troubled her. 

“Don’t bother yourself,” she said with 
embarrassment. 

He went to where the string and the piece 
of bread had fallen, and picked them up. 

“Here,” he said, handing them to Leon¬ 
tine. “They’re yours. Take them.” 

C I don’t know,” she commented, to cover 
her embarrassment. “Aren’t things changed 
here?” 

“No, nothing,” said Lampieur. 

99 


The Hounded Man 


He looked at Leontine, and continued: 

“You’re the one that’s changed. Don’t 
you think so?” 

“Me?” 

“Yes. You.” 

“My goodness!” she stammered. “What 
makes you say a thing like that?” 

“I can see,” declared Lampieur, as he 
leaned against a wall of the cellar and gave 
Leontine a significant look. 

“Ah!” she said then, “you think so?” 

“Sure,” he insisted. “You’ve come back. 
And, to come back, you must have got over 
being afraid of me . . . the way you 

used to be.” 

“I’m still afraid,” Leontine admitted. 

Lampieur gave a little discreet laugh. 

“You don’t look it,” he murmured. Then 
suddenly changing his tone and his manner, 
he added with a sort of solicitude, “You’re 
not too hot?” 

Leontine wilted. 

“Well!” continued Lampieur. “Take off 
IOO 


The Hounded Man 


your coat. You might catch cold going out. 
Pm telling you to take off your coat. Don’t 
you want to?” 

He approached her. 

“Bah, you’ve got plenty of time,” he 
argued. “Besides, since you’ve come, we’ve 
got something to talk about, eh?” 

“Pm in for it,” thought the poor girl. 

Nevertheless she undid her coat and 
handed it to Lampieur who opened a door 
and hung it behind it. 

“This,” he said, from behind the door, “is 
the woodshed.” 

He added, without emphasis, “The wood¬ 
shed, where I sleep some times, while the 
oven is burning, when Pm too tired. . . .” 

Leontine listened, breathless, while her 
glance roved over the thick white walls and 
ceiling that hemmed her in. The heat was 
suffocating, and not a sound penetrated from 
the outside world. 

“Even if I screamed, it wouldn’t do any 
good,” she thought. 

IOI 


j 


The Hounded Man 


Wild thoughts leaped to her mind, and a 
slight shiver ran up her back. What an ad¬ 
venture! Leontine felt that she was lost. 

“But what are you doing behind that 
door?” she found courage to ask. 

“Pm bringing in some wood,” answered 
Lampieur. 

There followed a silence broken by the 
dull sound of rolling logs as the man filled 
his arms. Then he pushed open the door 
and returned, walking to the oven bent al¬ 
most double under a load of wood which he 
dropped with a loud crash. 

“Costs money,” Lampieur remarked, 
pointing to the oven. “Night and day, with¬ 
out a stop. You can imagine. . . .” 

“Yes . . . yes,” faltered Leontine, 

“I guess so.” 

“Come and have a look,” continued Lam¬ 
pieur, leading her toward the woodshed, “a 
pile like that lasts only four days.” 

He showed her the wood, piles of it reach¬ 
ing to the ceiling. 


102 


The Hounded Man 


“See?” he remarked. 

An odor of the woods, of moss, lichen and 
sap filled the woodshed. 

“What’s that?” asked Leontine, noticing 
a blanket lying on the ground. 

“That’s my bed,” answered Lampieur. 

Leontine turned away. There was some¬ 
thing in Lampieur’s voice as he said “My 
bed” that no woman could mistake. 

“Let’s go out,” she said then. 

They found themselves again face to face 
in the bakeroom, where the heat was so great 
one seemed to be walking in flames. 

“I think I’ll go,” Leontine suggested, to 
shake off the torpor that was gaining on her. 

Lampier did not frown. But he gazed at 
Leontine with a glance so fierce that she be¬ 
came alarmed. 

“I’d like my coat,” she said quickly. 

“Ah, your coat?” 

“Give it to me.” 

“Wait!” Lampieur murmured. 

A struggle was going on within him that 
103 


The Hounded Man 

could be clearly seen in every expression of 
his face. 

“Ah! Ah! ” he muttered. “Your coat... 

“I have to go,” begged Leontine. 

“No,” said Lampieur. “You can go 
afterward. . . .” 

“After what?” 

“I’ve got a proposition,” he began, trying 
to give some coherence to his words. “An 
arrangement . . . whatever you like. . t .” 
He made a gesture of irritation. “Anyway, 
think it over before you give me your an¬ 
swer. . . . Tell me, were you glad to 

see me again?” 

“Please!” Leontine implored. 

“Eh?” Lampieur grumbled. “Quit that. 
. . . There isn’t any please, see? Only, 

since that night, Pve been thinking about 
how scared you are of me, and I felt bad 
about it, because Pm not as bad as I look. 
. . . No, no, Pm not bad. . . . 

Pm not. . . . So I thought it out by 

myself . . . the way I live . . . 

104 


The Hounded Man 


in my room . . . here, there, always 

alone, even in the restaurants. And I said 
to myself ... Eh? You get the 
idea? I didn’t like to think you were scared 
of me. It’s a fact, absolutely. Don’t you 
believe it?” 

Leontine took a backward step. 

“What?” he said in astonishment. “You 
don’t believe it? Go on! You can bet 
your life I’ve been sorry about you. But 
you don’t know anything yet about how I 
got the idea of being nice with you, and hav¬ 
ing you understand me. You can’t know that. 
And yet I couldn’t get the idea out of my 
head, at first, all night. Do you hear that? 
I kind of liked you from the first. And the 
next day I still had the idea. I’ve got it 
now, that idea about what you had become 
for me. But, already those things between 
us. . . 

“What things?” asked Leontine weakly. 

“Things that’ll have to be got over pretty 
soon,” he said with force. “And so I didn’t 

105 


The Hounded Man 


dare to go where I could find you, the next 
day. I was ashamed. And then, what 
would you have said, eh? Who knows? 
I didn’t like to seem to be running after you 
to talk to you. You wouldn’t have listened 
to me. Well, for the first nights, I was al¬ 
most crazy down here. Nothing worked. 
. . . It was your fault, understand, with 

all your scariness. It kept me from going out 
there into the street where you were and ex¬ 
plaining what was troubling me. Fortunately 
working down here helped me get a grip on 
myself, and then I knew that you’d be the 
one to make the first move. . . .” 

“I didn’t want to come,” said Leontine. 

“But you did come. I knew you would. 
I was sure of it . . . as sure as I am 

here, and you can’t imagine how much it 
pleased me. There. You’re not obliged 
to answer me tonight. Think it over. Take 
your time. Take until tomorrow night. 
You can come right down through the bake- 
shop.” 

io 6 


The Hounded Man 


“And if I answered right now?” asked 
Leontine, with visible repugnance. 

Lampieur swaggered. “Then it’ll have 
to be the answer I want,” he declared in a 
low voice. Then, very calmly, hitching up 
his big denim trousers, he waited. 

Leontine became white, and seemed about 
to speak, for a moment, but her throat con¬ 
tracted and she could not articulate a single 
word. 

“Well?” asked Lampieur. “It’s yes?” 

He took a step toward her . . . an¬ 
other step. She gazed at him as he ad¬ 
vanced. He repeated: 

“It’s yes?” 

Leontine suddenly noticed that he was 
stripped to the waist. She could see his 
arms, his chest, his shoulders white and shin¬ 
ing, and, for the first time in her life, she 
felt an overwhelming shame and disgust. 
But it was too late, and when he pressed her 
to him she could only say: 

“What do you want of me now?” 

107 


Chapter io 

W HEN she awoke in Lampieur’s room 
next morning she felt none of the 
emotions he might have wished her to feel. 
Instead, she felt like a prostitute, craving 
nothing but rest, feeling for one man the hor¬ 
ror inspired in her by all men, and by her 
degradation. As she looked about her she was 
overwhelmed by a sense of humiliation, 
mingling with her shame. And yet she had 
no one but herself to blame if now she was 
committed to eternal acceptance of Lam- 
pieur’s attentions. There was no escape. 
Whatever wretched consequences resulted of 
her adventure, she would have to accept 
them, for she herself had made them possible. 
She pictured to herself the horrible future she 
had brought upon herself. 

108 


The Hounded Man 


The fact was that she had given in to 
Lampieur out of fear that he would remem¬ 
ber his threats and perhaps carry them out. 
She felt she could not have prevented him. 
She remembered the cellar with its chalky 
walls, the dead silence that reigned there, 
its air of a dungeon cut off from all the 
world. . . . Why, oh why had she 

gone in there? She could not remember. 
It seemed to her as though the events of the 
night before had happened to someone else. 
It was only in snatches that she recollected 
her far-off impressions, remembered her 
haunting desire to find her way to the grill, 
to lean down and to call Lampieur. That 
desire was the cause of everything. It had 
overpowered her, robbed her of her own 
will. Even now, contemplating her deg¬ 
radation, she felt as though she had been 
robbed of her individuality, and had become 
someone else. She was pervaded with a 
sense of wonder. She had in fact changed, 
and she felt a great pity for herself. 

109 


The Hounded Man 


Lampieur snored beside her, crushed with 
weariness, in the depths of sleep. If only 
she too could escape from her torment! 
But she could not. There was no escape from 
the horror of her thoughts. 

“It’s like that,” she repeated over and over 
again, “It’s like that. There’s nothing to 
be done.” 

She examined the narrow untidy room. 
It was strewn with cigarette butts. A trunk 
served for dresser. Through the skylight 
the daylight streamed in, harsh, raw, cutting, 
painful to the eye. Leontine could not stand 
it. She turned, gazed at Lampieur for a 
long moment, then closed her eyes and tried 
to make her mind a blank. 

“Ahhhh! ” came from Lampieur. 

Instinctively Leontine moved as far away 
from him as she could, and feigned sleep 
for fear he would wake up. 

“What?” he murmured, as though in a 
dream. “What? You . . . you were 

waiting for me?” He stirred, breathing with 
no 


The Hounded Man 


difficulty. “What?” he continued. “I . . . 
I . . . don’t . . . know. . . He 
continued emitting words, making no sense, 
but somehow betraying an indescribable ter¬ 
ror. 

“Come on! Come on! ” murmured Leon- 

tine. 

She shook Lampieur and gently roused 
him from his horrible dream. 

“It’s me,” she said. “Can’t you see?” 

“Yes,” he answered. 

He sat up and gazed at Leontine. 

“Weren’t you sleeping?” he asked in a 
voice that was not his own. 

“No, I wasn’t sleeping,” admitted Leon¬ 
tine. 

Lampieur stared at her stupidly, then 
seemed to pull himself together as he fell 
into a heavy meditation. 

Leontine had also sat up, and her eyes 
remained glued on Lampieur who seemed to 
have forgotten her for a moment. What 
could he be thinking about? She could not 
hi 


The Hounded Man 


guess, but it was evident from the way he 
frowned and glanced at her that she had a 
part in his thoughts, and that these thoughts 
were tinged with suspicion and distrust. 

“Aren’t we going out?” Leontine asked 
sharply. 

For answer Lampieur got up, slipped his 
feet into his old slippers, pulled on his 
trousers, went to a table and began to wash. 
Leontine followed him with fascinated eyes 
as he dipped his head into the cold water, 
scrubbed, dried himself. He attended to 
his toilet with the minute concentration of 
a man who is not sure of himself. As he 
emptied the dirty water into a bucket, he said: 

“Yes, we can go out,” and he made room 
for Leontine who rose in her turn and began 
to dress. 

It might have been three in the afternoon. 
The light that fell through the skylight was 
still strong and even, but it had begun to 
slant. Lampieur looked at his watch, 
dropped it back into his pocket, looked out 
112 


The Hounded Man 


of the window. The worry on his face 
turned at times into an expression of sad 
resignation. Whatever his thoughts were, 
he kept them to himself, walking about the 
room, sitting down, standing up, carefully 
avoiding Leontine. He hated that girl. 
He measured the space that separated them, 
and his thoughts turned on the thousand 
terrors she had made him suffer. He could 
see her outside, slinking along the walls. 
He could see her in the cellar. He could 
not get her out of his mind. 

But all these thoughts and the torment 
they caused were as nothing beside the fact 
that this girl of misfortune was here, in his 
very room. He would have liked to drive 
her out. As she stood by the bed, dressing, 
Lampieur was filled with regret for his ac¬ 
tion of the night before. Now that his 
mind was clear, he felt no desire for Leon¬ 
tine. He could not understand how he 
could ever have desired her. What mor¬ 
bid appetite could have driven him toward 
113 


The Hounded Man 


her? All he wanted now was to get down 
to the street, and to find an excuse for leav¬ 
ing the girl, never to see her again. 

But when they finally reached the street, 
they found themselves in the grip of a hope¬ 
less uneasiness. Each wanted to part from 
the other, but neither dared say the first 
word. People hurried all about them. Om¬ 
nibuses moved noisily. The uproar around 
them was so great neither could formulate 
a sentence. Besides, it was not yet dark. 
Slanting rays fell on the houses and diffused 
a sort of glow that made the whole street 
luminous. It was this glow that troubled 
Lampieur and embarrassed Leontine. In 
the dark, probably, the words would have 
come. But Lampieur was afraid to see the 
effect of his words on the girl, and he feared 
to lose control of the situation, facing this 
girl whose thoughts he could not guess. 

“Later,” he thought, passing a weary hand 
over his eyes, “It will be better.” 


The Hounded Man 

“Are we going to Fouasse’s?” asked Leon- 
tine. 

“No,” answered Lampieur. “We’re go¬ 
ing that way—” 

He pointed in a direction opposite to that 
of the bar, and went on without another 
word. 

“You see,” murmured Leontine after a 
few moments, “I’ll have to go to my hotel.” 

Lampieur did not frown. 

“All right, go ahead,” he said. “Is it 
far from here?” 

“Pretty far.” 

“I’ll go with you,” he said, and followed 
closely as she turned to the left into the 
Sebastopol boulevard, where shop fronts 
were beginning to light up. 

At this time of evening the streets were 
crowded, and the street cars dashed at top 
speed along the tracks. At certain points 
policemen would stop the traffic. The pe¬ 
destrians who had waited in gathering num- 
115 


The Hounded Man 


bers at the corner would cross, then the 
traffic resumed its course. 

Night was falling. Old women so faded 
and ugly one would would have thought 
their charms had long lost all commercial 
value, were beginning to fill the scattered 
benches along the sidewalks. Other old 
women loitered in front of the shops. Sand- 
wichmen plodded up and down under their 
placards. Pale youths walked along in 
groups, and young prostitutes, returning to 
their business after the horrors of the day, 
moved among the passers-by, throwing them 
painted smiles and sly invitations. 

Lampieur looked at Leontine. 

“Is it still far?” he asked. 

Leontine did not hear him. She was mak¬ 
ing her way through the crowd without pay¬ 
ing any attention to Lampieur. She was 
indifferent to his presence. To her, Lam¬ 
pieur was not this man who walked beside 
her, unable to conquer his indecision. She 
was thinking of the other Lampieur, the one 
ii 6 


The Hounded Man 


whose crime she had imagined, and who hor¬ 
rified her. It was the crime that exerted 
upon her an influence that nothing she 
could do would dispel. This man hung upon 
her with all his weight; he crushed her; he 
filled her with cowardice and sadness. It 
was no longer possible to escape him. It 
was no longer a matter of breaking with 
Lampieur. She had done that once, and 
she had been compelled at last to return, to 
call him, to go down to his cellar. That had 
happened only the night before. She could 
not forget that. And, to cap it all, Lam¬ 
pieur had taken her and then turned away 
with outrageous contempt. 


Chapter n 

HAT is what Leontine could not wipe 



JL out of her memory, for she had clearly 
understood that it was not a question of love 
between her and Lampieur, but of gross de¬ 
sire that nothing could help her escape. She 
had no illusions. But if, in default of love, 
he had only confessed his torment, she would 
have offered her sympathy, since it was this 
very torment that had attracted her to him. 
Alas, Leontine knew what her sort could 
expect, and she blamed no one. It was the 
way of life, to be accepted just as one ac¬ 
cepts so many other unpleasant necessities. 

Deep in such bitter thoughts, Leontine 
walked along, and Lampieur accompanied 
her. They did not speak. They walked 
side by side, seeing nothing. The boule¬ 
vards were jammed with traffic. 


118 


The Hounded Man 


“My God!” grumbled Lampieur. 

He paused. Then, as Leontine went on 
without paying him any attention, he caught 
up to her, astonished at himself for having 
failed to take advantage of the opportunity 
to leave her. 

“Well,” he thought, “what’s all this?” 

He felt an odd sense of injury at Leon- 
tine’s lack of attention. “We’ll see,” he re¬ 
solved. “We’ll see. . . . This won’t 

last long!” Deep within him all sorts of 
dim hostile intentions were forming and tak¬ 
ing life. He did not resist them. Rather, 
they seemed to lead toward the goal he had 
had in view ever since that morning. What 
a goal! Lampieur himself was not yet 
aware of it, and he did not realize that his 
hostility to the wretched girl had been born 
earlier than that day. If he thought that 
his dislike for the girl, and his secret desire 
to make her suffer, dated only from the mo¬ 
ment when he became aware of them, he was 
wrong. He had hated her stubbornly from 
119 


The Hounded Man 


the day of his crime. Perhaps it was this 
hate that had made him take her and humil¬ 
iate her. He might not understand it, but 
there was no other explanation for his desire. 
His desire for her had been born of his hate, 
but he did not know it. 

What need was there, anyway, for him to 
understand what had prompted his desire 
the night before? It could not have made 
more keen the satisfaction he had in the reso¬ 
lution he had made. 

“Hey! Listen! Listen!” called Leon- 
tine, as Lampieur walked blindly on, 
wrapped up in his thoughts. 

He stopped in surprise, and asked: 

“Is this the place?” 

“Yes, this is it,” she murmured. 

Lampieur saw a dirty entrance, a flight of 
stairs, a white globe on which the word 
“Hotel” was painted in black letters. He 
saw Leontine, and she was looking at him, 
waiting for him to make a decision. 

120 


The Hounded Man 


“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Go 
ahead. . . . I’ll follow you.” 

He took Leontine by the arm and made 
her go in first. 

Her room, on the fourth floor, looked out 
over a courtyard and the kitchens of a build¬ 
ing which was taller than the hotel, and kept 
it half in darkness even in broad daylight. 

The window of the room would not close 
tight. A ragged curtain hung over it. Un¬ 
even tiles served for a floor. 

Leontine lit a lamp, drew the curtain, and 
while Lampieur was closing the door she 
took off her coat and sat on the bed. 

“It’s big,” commented Lampieur. 

“What?” 

“I was talking about the room,” he said, 
and, not knowing what more to say, he sat 
down on a chair, took off his cap, and said 
nothing. He started at the red flame of the 
lamp, as though waiting for her to speak. 
But the silent minutes followed each other, 
and Lampieur’s uneasiness grew, for he had 
121 


The Hounded Man 


suddenly thought of something that had 
never occurred to him before, something that 
surprised him and made him think. 

For the first time, in fact, Leontine had 
ceased to be a nondescript, a mythical per¬ 
son about whom he knew nothing save 
that she was afraid and that she possessed a 
secret. Where was the secret? Lampieur 
could see the room, the bed, the wretched 
curtain that covered the window. All these 
things, which had no importance, began to 
take on a meaning and force him to think 
of Leontine as a person having a life of her 
own—even a person of special importance 
to himself. 

Little by little he was becoming accus¬ 
tomed to this novel and disconcerting fact. 
After all, what did it matter if Leontine 
had a life of her own? What person, no 
matter how dependent on another, hasn’t? 
He himself had an individual existence— 
only he had lived away from reality so long, 
in a world of suspicions and fears, that he 
122 


The Hounded Man 


was aware only of them and of the phantoms 
they engendered. This was the reason for 
his surprise and for the embarrassment Leon- 
tine had seen when he had sat down and 
stared without saying a word. 

Leontine tried to fathom his silence, but 
in vain. If he had accompanied her to the 
room, wasn’t it because he had something to 
say to her? Wasn’t he going to say it? His 
silence became unbearable at last. It wasn’t 
reasonable. It troubled Leontine, and 
frightened her. 

On her part, she was wondering what mad 
idea had prompted her to permit Lampieur 
to accompany her to her room. He was 
acting so strangely. Was he mad? She 
saw him rise, move to the lamp, lower the 
wick. Then he went to the mantel, picked 
up the objects on it one by one and examined 
them, as though looking for an answer to 
the curiosity that had led him to them. 

“That,” he said in a low voice, picking up 
a little photograph, “is that yours?” He 
123 


The Hounded Man 


turned to Leontine and, still holding it in 
his hand, he added, “It’s a baby.” 

“Sure.” 

“What baby?” he asked. “Have you got 
one?” 

“Dead,” answered Leontine. 

Lampieur put the picture back and, taking 
a step away, looked around him sullenly. 

“He died at three,” added Leontine. “He 
was with some people Pd paid to take 
care of him in the country.” 

“When was that?” 

“After I left home. In fact, I left home 
because of him. You can understand they 
didn’t want me at home, with a baby. The 
old man kicked me out.” 

“And your mother?” 

“Never had a mother,” she explained. 
“Did you?” 

“Me? Oh, I’ve still got my people,” he 
muttered. “Only, they don’t live in Paris. 
They don’t know Paris. They’re pretty 
good people, out there. . . .” He raised 
124 


The Hounded Man 


his arm, then let it drop. “Out there . . .” 
he added, and for a moment his eyes turned 
on a picture that he alone could see. 

The moment did not last. Leontine had 
caught, however, an unaccustomed gleam in 
his eye, but it only cowed her. Lampieur 
broke the spell with a burst of ugly laughter, 
and became another man. 

“Hey! What?” he asked. “Was I talk¬ 
ing?” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” said 
Leontine hesitantly. “Don’t you remem¬ 
ber?” 

“Maybe I do,” he said. “I talked about 
my people.” He sneered, and added in a 
tone of contempt, “When that happens, I 
don’t think only of them. I think of my¬ 
self, and I remember that they were pretty 
hard. Ha! That time’s far away, thank 
God.” 

“Don’t think any more about it,” Leon¬ 
tine suggested. 


125 


The Hounded Man 


“Yes,” he said, as though talking to him¬ 
self. “Yes . . . yes. . . .” 

“We all have memories.” 

“It’s funny! . . .” 

He added, “Bad memories.” 

“Everybody has,” she said. 


126 


Chapter 12 

MPIEUR understood now why he had 



jL^j wanted to be rid of Leontine, and he 
felt with sadness that he would not succeed. 
He was tied to her by too many memories. 
He could not break with her without having 
everything to fear from it. That is why he 
had followed her here, and why he could not 
make up his mind to go. For him the whole 
world was bounded by this hotel room which 
contained the girl. He felt it. He more than 
felt it—he was sure of it, and it made him 
angry. 

And still this room contained a terrible dan¬ 
ger if he permitted himself the half-confi¬ 
dences he had begun to make. They would 
lead him to far. Already they might have 
lost him. Fortunately he had caught himself 


127 


The Hounded Man 


in time. He looked at Leontine, and his 
hate awoke. 

“Well?” he asked. “What are we going 
to do now?” 

“Why, nothing.” 

“Sure,” said Lampieur. “There’s noth¬ 
ing to do. Your scheme’s failed.” 

“What scheme?” 

“Oh, I know,” he whispered, “I under¬ 
stand. You think I couldn’t see it?” 

Leontine shook her head. 

He continued: 

“Come on: First of all, why did you go 
back to your hotel? Wasn’t it so I’d follow 
you?” 

“No.” 

“And what about the picture on the mantel? 
Say, I suppose you didn’t know it was there? 
It’s a good trick, you know. . . . the 

picture of a dead kid. It’s caught many an¬ 
other.” 

“Stop!” begged Leontine. “You haven’t 
any right to say things like that. . . . 

128 


The Hounded Man 


It isn’t true. ... I couldn’t help it if 
you followed me.” 

“That’s likely!” 

“The proof . . . the proof . . .” 

“Oh, get away with your proof! ” sneered 
Lampieur. 

“The proof is that I wanted to get away 
from you . . .” 

“What?” 

“Go away . . . yes,” she almost shouted. 
“Anywhere. Just so I could get away, far, 
far . . . Where I could have forgot¬ 

ten you.” 

Lampieur started. 

“You?” he roared. “You wanted to do 
that?” He approached her. “Listen,” he 
sad, his face white. “You’re lying. You 
can’t forget . . . Don’t give me such stories. 
You can’t forget. It was so I’d be left alone 
that you wanted to go, so I’d go crazy again, 
so I’d go looking for you ... So 
I’d . . .” 

“Stop tormenting me!” 

129 


The Hounded Man 


“You’re the one that’s tormenting me,” 
he retorted hoarsely. “You’re the one. . . . 
Last night, you came just for that . . . 

you dropped your string . . . Eh? In 

the cellar . . . Than you called . . . 

And then you let go the string on purpose to 
come down . . . Will you tell me dif¬ 

ferent?” 

He towered over her. 

“Answer! ” he commanded. “Isn’t it true? 
Answer! I want to know what made you do 
those things . . . Why did you come 

back? . . . What do you want?” 

“Don’t come nearer!” she warned. 

He stopped short. She leaned, trembling, 
against the edge of the bed, gazing into his 
eyes with a look so intense that he could not 
bear it. 

“Go away,” she said. “Go away. Go! 
go! You can see that you must go . . . 

that you must leave me alone . . . that 

I haven’t any strength left. You’re only 
trying to do me harm.” 

130 


The Hounded Man 


Suddenly she buried her face in her hands, 
and Lampieur stood silent. His hate was 
leaving him. It was giving place to a stupor 
in which came the odd fear that she would 
end by escaping him. He had wanted noth¬ 
ing more than just that. Only two or three 
hours before he had wished he could leave 
her and never see her again. But he had 
counted without her. He hadn’t imagined 
that she could feel the same way toward 
him, and the thought wounded his self¬ 
esteem. It was unbearable. 

Lampieur needed no more, now that he 
saw the situation in its true light, to make 
him try to mend it. He felt he still had a 
chance. So long as he remained, no matter 
what she did he would have the advantage. 
In fact, Leontine no longer dared tell him 
to go away. She had moved away from 
him. She stood waiting, and Lampieur 
could see by her pallor that she could not 
resist him much longer. 

“All right,” he muttered. “Since you 
I3i 


The Hounded Man 


don’t want us to know each other any more, 
I’ll leave you alone . . * 

He put on his cap and, moving toward the 
door, he added in a low voice: 

“We’ve got the same idea. Us living the 
way I thought ... It can’t de done 
any more.” 

Leontine sighed. 

“Don’t make excuses,” said Lampieur. 
“Don’t tire yourself. We tried. Well, 
we didn’t succeed. There are lots of others 
like us.” 

“What makes you tell me that?” asked 
Leontine. 

Lampieur smiled bitterly. 

“Because . . .” he answered, and wav¬ 
ing his arm as though pointing to the room, 
he looked at the girl with so strange an eye 
that she thought him sincere, and let herself 
be taken in. 

“Well,” he concluded. “To each one 
his own life, eh?” 

He was perfectly sincere as he spoke, for 
132 


The Hounded Man 


he felt he must hold her not only because 
she could betray him, but also because it 
gave him a sense of pleasure to avenge him¬ 
self on her for what he had suffered. No 
other feeling was mingled with this. He 
was pitiless, and in that lay his power. 

Still he did not go, and Leontine did not 
have the courage to drive him out. New 
chains had been forged about them, drawing 
them together, and perhaps down in her 
heart Leontine blessed them, as though they 
were saving her from oblivion. 


133 


Chapter 13 

'TER that scene in which they had not 



A been able to part, they entered a strange 
existence. Leontine came to live in Lam- 
pieur’s room. That is to say, she waited 
for him, sometimes until morning, in an office 
at the Market, where he came for her, and 
they went up to sleep. They could be seen 
at dinner together in Rue Saint Denis every 
evening. Then Lampieur went to his work 
and Leontine employed her time as she had 
always done until midnight, when Lampieur 
met her at Fouasse’s and gave her to drink. 

No one had anything to say about this. 
It was perfectly natural. It was known that 
Lampieur earned his living and was a good 
workman. And so everyone agreed that he 
had the right to do as he pleased. But 
Leontine’s companions did not look on it in 


134 


The Hounded Man 


the same way 3 they were a little surprised, 
and they sometimes talked about it when 
Leontine was not there, and sensed something 
mysterious in it. 

There was evidently some mystery in all 
this. No one who gave it thought could 
doubt it, the two were so ill-matched. 
Lampieur’s worried air, his rough and sulky 
manners, Leontine’s reserve toward him, 
could not be overlooked. They were punc¬ 
tual enough in their meetings, but neither 
showed any pleasure. They drank at the 
same table, without a single word. Mutual 
indifference separated them even more than 
one could guess. What could it mean? 
Nobody knew. It wasn’t usual. And when 
at last Lampieur called for the check, it was 
noticed that he often left Leontine without 
even a goodnight, and that she remained in 
her place, silent and motionless, as though 
in a dream. 

If it was a dream, it was a sober one. But 
what would people have thought of Leontine 
135 


The Hounded Man 


and Lampieur if they could see them at home, 
when they went to bed? They did not ex¬ 
change a single word. Lampieur turned in 
first. He watched his companion for a 
moment, then went to sleep, and Leontine lay 
down beside him, finally joining him in a 
somber rest filled with nightmares. 

It was in sleep that they found each other. 
They were possessed by the same torment. 
It brought them face to face with the abom¬ 
inable necessity which forced them to take 
refuge together, out of the world of reality 
in a word of fears and eternal anguish. 
Through their dreams, in the confused min¬ 
gling of their consciousnesses, they sought 
each other, in the illusion that they under¬ 
stood and sustained each other. Leontine 
never wearied of it. She brought a tireless 
zeal to the task. She spent herself prodi¬ 
gally. And when she awoke and found that 
she had to resume her daily task, she hud¬ 
dled against Lampieur, and sometimes she 
wept. 


The Hounded Man 


On his part, Lampieur seemed to see in 
reality the vague forms that had surrounded 
him in his dreams. He saw them, and then 
all vanished without reason, as though 
through an evil spell, and he found himself 
in the presence of Leontine who was no 
longer any help to him. 

These awakenings depressed them more 
and more, for the more Lampieur and Leon¬ 
tine strove to escape their torment, the more 
forcibly they were forced to return to it. 
And there was nothing else that could claim 
their interest. Nothing in the street or in 
the bars could distract them. They could 
not even become interested in people who 
they thought were watching them. These 
people at once become meaningless, grotesque, 
harmless. What was there for them to see? 
Lampieur paid no attention to them. He 
was mechanically rude to them. It was the 
same with his work. He got through with 
it like an automaton performing a set task. 
His body toiled away in the cellar, but 


The Hounded Man 


his spirit was far away, or else near, per¬ 
haps even in the cellar, but busy at something 
else. 

Lampieur would forget Leontine at such 
moments. She was nothing to him, or else 
she was only momentarily related to this or 
that thought, and it was of no importance. 
The only thing that mattered was that he had 
begun to brood over his crime, and while he 
did not suffer, he was troubled. Already 
five or six times he had had to pull himself 
together and make an effort of memory to 
realize that he, Lampieur, had actually com¬ 
mitted it. At times he believes himself the 
victim of a horrible delusion. Then some 
detail would spring to his rescue, he would 
recognize it, and his doubt would flee. 

He presently began to gather as many 
details as he could, and to reconstruct the 
facts of his banal murder. Then began his 
trouble. He puzzled over the motives that 
had impelled him, recollected them only 
dimly, and with the greatest effort. Was it 
138 


The Hounded Man 


the money? Was it a taste for danger? 
Doubtless both. Sometimes a third motive 
would appear dimly—something belonging 
to Lampieur’s very nature, the same impulse 
that now caused his sadistic tyranny over 
Leontine. 

As for Leontine, she understood nothing 
of this. She thought his callousness and 
brutality only due to the fact of his 
crime, and for this reason she forgave him. 
How often had she tried to picture the crime, 
and put herself in his place, the better to feel 
his suffering and share it with him! She 
felt an immense need to devote herself to 
him, a constant need that in the end brought 
her consolation. She had, in a sense, become 
another woman. Nothing could shake her 
devotion. For instance, she felt no vexation 
if he left her sitting at the table in Fouasse’s 
without a word; instead she followed him 
with her thoughts, with a humble and re¬ 
signed tenderness. She went with him in 
spirit. She wished he might find peace and, 
139 


The Hounded Man 


had it been necessary, she was ready to sacri¬ 
fice her peace to his. 

But all the peace Leontine could taste was 
so little that it would have tempted no one. 
Could anyone call the worry and distress in 
which she lived peace? She would get up, 
leave the bar, and, far from resenting the 
feelings Lampieur had awakened in her, she 
felt grateful. It seemed to her that they 
gave her an aim, some reason for her 
wretched existence; she felt that somehow 
they redeemed her. It was a new existence 
which purified her of the daily shame of her 
former life. Leontine felt exalted. Out 
of her girlhood dreams she had fashioned a 
sort of ideal, of a passionate and superior 
way of living, and she felt herself filled with 
this ideal. Thanks to this ideal, which only 
a girl could have held so high before her, 
Leontine regretted nothing. Perhaps, even, 
she felt a bitter sort of satisfaction in the 
thought of all she had gone through to reach 
the point where she could pay the price of 
140 


The Hounded Man 


such a transformation. There was no clash 
between this and the things she cared for, 
and that made up her life. Without chang¬ 
ing anything, it raised Leontine to a higher 
level, and offered a strange means of putting 
her in harmony with herself and of giving 
her confidence. A kind of happiness min¬ 
gled with her torment, attaching her to Lam- 
pieur, providing its compensation for the 
cares that, woman-like, she felt it her duty to 
share. 

In the streets at night, among her kind, 
her strange happiness went with her and bore 
her up. In her mind she saw Lampieur toil¬ 
ing in his cellar, keeping watch over himself. 
The thought of his crime dominated her, but 
it had lost its horror. She had become ac¬ 
customed to it. More than this, it was her 
only means of identifying herself with 
Lampieur, of staying by him every moment 
to shield him from the consequences of his 
crime. They were terrible consequences, but 
they carried the indescribable attraction which 
141 


The Hounded Man 


retribution and great anguish exert. Leon- 
tine knew this. She knew, too, that coarse 
as he was, Lampieur might come to realize, 
as she had, the compelling power exercised 
upon all sinners by the thought of retribution. 
It was dreadful to think of this. She would 
not submit to it, and fought desperately 
against the idea, feeling that in doing so she 
secretly diverted Lampieur from the deadly 
attraction that called to her. 

Determined though she was to protect him 
at all costs from this danger, she had never 
dared warn him against it. What was the 
use? When he was there she was self-con¬ 
scious and lost her assurance. She was never 
at ease with him. Amid all the intimacy of 
their life they had never been able to speak 
openly, or even to talk of foolish little things 
together. Under ordinary, simple words, 
strange allusions might creep in . . . 

ambiguous questionings . . . Lampieur 

had never allowed it. Having once made his 
fateful confidence to her, he held his tongue, 
142 


The Hounded Man 


and if he did speak it was reluctantly, and in 
such vague terms that his speech meant noth¬ 
ing. How could she have persuaded him to 
listen to her? He would have stopped her 
short. And so she kept her fears to herself 
and opened her heart to no one. 


143 


Chapter 14 

' ONTINE took to prowling about the 



bakery where Lampieur worked. She 
had taken alarm at the thought that he too 
might begin to feel the treacherous fascina¬ 
tion of his crime and its consequences. She 
felt her nearness protected him. At least, 
she told herself she believed it, for it reas¬ 
sured and comforted her. 

In her dreams she helped him outwit the 
most cunning schemes, rescued him from 
every trap, gave him courage. She liked 
such dreams. They helped her to plan how 
to overcome his resentment, should he hear 
of her touching solicitude. She did not feel 
the need to speak. She wandered, slowly 
pacing a vigilant patrol around the bakery, 
approaching by ever narrowing circles, halt¬ 
ing at last three doors up in a bar from 


144 


The Hounded Man 


where she could watch the street unnoticed, 
ready to give Lampieur warning at sight of 
the slightest danger. Each night, sitting 
among the drinkers in this bar, Leontine felt 
again an odd pity for Lampieur, which she 
did not resist. She abandoned herself to it. 
It gave her a strange pleasure. It seemed 
to offer an added reason to cling to him. At 
length she forgot even the nature of her 
emotion. 

This bar to which Leontine drifted every 
night was frequented by longshoremen and 
laborers, and occasional sordid women who 
regaled themself with red wine. It was not 
a noisy place. A fate from which none might 
hope to escape seemed to weigh equally upon 
all. Those nights in the Market! Here a 
drinker, elbows on the bar, had the somno¬ 
lent air of the beasts in harness who wait in 
the street for the stroke of a whip to awaken 
them. There another, sprawled across the 
table, held his head in his hands and stared 
vacantly about him. A heavy, weary silence 
145 


The Hounded Man 


filled the bar. The place took on the fantas¬ 
tic air of a nightmare filled with a cruel, sul¬ 
len light. As daylight aproached, the fascina¬ 
tion of the place grew on Leontine. She 
could not tear herself away. Between those 
people, each with his trouble and his silent 
torment, and the girl who was so weary, so 
absolutely exhausted, there was no visible 
difference. Only an immense sense of futility 
mingled with Leontine’s desire to be of use to 
Lampieur, and, whatever she undertook, it 
robbed her even of the hope that it might 
not be in vain. 

Along toward morning, Leontine became 
aware of her condition, and grieved. An 
uncertain light began to filter through the 
windows of the bar. It outlined the roofs 
across the way with a pale halo. Then the 
sky began to lighten. It became gray, a 
dirty, uniform, endless gray, which slowly 
bleached as the light rose and mingled with 
it. In the street, Leontine first saw a sort 
of troubled movement around the remaining 
146 


The Hounded Man 


gas lights. Soon the lights ceased to exist. 
They yellowed, they burned meaninglessly 
in the greater light of day. Then, suddenly, 
the harsh clang of a street car and its intrud¬ 
ing roar of wheels tore the silence. 

Then Lampieur pushed open the door of 
the bar, and Leontine returned to life, while 
all about her seemed at the same time to 
awaken, to move, to jostle each other. Store 
shutters were folded back; persiennes opened j 
people began to pass the bar or, like Lam¬ 
pieur, entered and called for hot coffee which 
was brought to them at the counter. Leon¬ 
ti ne called Lampieur. He aproached, sat be¬ 
side her, and each understood, from the 
glance they exchanged, how much harsh sat¬ 
isfaction they felt at being together again. 
This single glance sufficed them. Then 
Lampieur and Leontine beckoned to the 
waiter. Later they went out quietly, with¬ 
out attracting any attention. 

“Coming?” Lampieur said. 

Leontine hurried after him and they re- 
147 


The Hounded Man 


turned to Rue des Precheurs, to their room 
under the roof, and quickly went to bed. 

Had Leontine wished, she could have 
waited for Lampieur in this room, instead of 
spending her nights in the bar where she 
tired herself out and suffered her agonizing 
fears. Lampieur had suggested it many 
times. But over there, at least, she could tell 
herself that she was watching over Lampieur, 
and could know if any danger threatened. 
Here—what wouldn’t she be imagining? 
It would have been even worse. She would 
have gone mad; she could not have stood it. 
At times when she was with Lampieur she 
felt herself so stifled that she felt a sort of 
obscure desire to get away, to walk straight 
ahead, anywhere, and to try to begin a new 
life somewhere else. Could she do it? At 
once Lampieur’s presence recalled her to 
reality, and made her feel that perhaps 
Lampieur, too, felt such a desire, and suffered 
from it as much as she. Why did he not 
give in to her? Leontine dared not think 
148 


The Hounded Man 


about it. She would be nothing without 
Lampieur. He had taken her out of her 
life and brought her so strange a destiny 
that she feared she would be incapable of 
returning to her old existence and bearing 
the burden of it. It was too heavy for her. 
It would have crushed her. She could 
scarcely sustain its weight by clinging to 
Lampieur. Let him merely leave her, and 
seek elsewhere the rest which he knew he 
would not find, and that would be the end 
of Leontine. She would lose everything at 
once. Whatever she tried, she could not 
have managed to begin life again. 

Fortunately such sad moments did not last 
long, and they uncovered their forlorn vistas 
only to make her appreciate the more the bit¬ 
ter joys of her present condition. After all, 
Lampieur was saving her from herself. He 
gave her the illusion of being more than a 
mere girl, and this illusion had its value. 
Thanks to the crime he had committed, life 
had taken on a new meaning. It was not 
149 


The Hounded Man 


merely a succession of days and nights, of 
pleasures, of disconnected acts. On the con¬ 
trary, day and night Lampieur’s crime main¬ 
tained its significance for him and for the girl. 
It was always present in their memories $ it 
brought them back to each other. Whatever 
they did, though they never mentioned it, it 
was this crime that decided every question and 
conditioned all their existence. 

It would have been easy to prove this in 
the case of Lampieur if anyone had taken 
the trouble, for he too had changed. His 
disposition and his manner were getting out 
of hand. He was no longer master of them. 
He had some terrible moments. On some 
nights, as he got up in his room and dressed, 
a frightful distress could be read in his eyes. 
Nothing mattered to him. He had no joy in 
life. His depression became so painful that 
it showed in his face. At other times he was 
seized with a sort of rage. It had no special 
object, but it would burst out at the slightest 
provocation, and Leontine endured it without 
150 


The Hounded Man 


complaint, so great was the pity that awoke 
in her and filled her with submissiveness. 
Lampieur could not help realize this. But 
it was just this that maddened him most, and 
he raged at her all the more because she did 
not fight back and did not seem to resent it. 

Those were scenes of indescribable violence. 
Lampieur yelled at Leontine the disgust she 
inspired in him, and reproached her for hav¬ 
ing changed his life. Leontine listened in 
silence. His abuse did not touch her, nor 
even did the blows he gave her to make her 
answer him. She knew only too well that 
it was not she who had the power to change 
Lampieur’s life. And she felt he knew it 
too. It was because he suffered that he let 
himself go like that. She did not hold Lam¬ 
pieur responsible for the harm he caused. 
She forgave him. His outbursts were fol¬ 
lowed by such frightful periods of reaction, 
of overwhelming moroseness, in which he 
could not find himself, that she felt sure they 
were caused by no ill-will toward herself. 

1 5i 


Chapter 15 

~"TER one of these scenes Lampieur, 



r\ unexpectedly repentant, apologized to 
Leontine, and she could not keep back her 


tears. 


“Don’t cry, girl. . . . Come on, 

don’t cry,” said Lampieur. “What’s the 
matter?” 

“I can’t help it,” she murmured. 

Lampieur wavered. 

“Of course,” he said, and, approaching her, 
he gazed at her gravely with a mingled sur¬ 
prise and compassion that softened him and 
made him think. 

“What are you crying for?” he asked, as 
though Leontine’s answer might bring him 
a startling revelation. 

Leontine shook her head. 

“There are times when a fellow doesn’t 


152 


The Hounded Man 


know what he’s doing,” said Lampieur. “He 
can’t hold back. . . . He’s driven. . . . 
He’s carried away by words. . . . He 

goes too far. . . .” 

“Oh! ” answered Leontine without looking 
up. “That’s not what I’m crying for.” 

“What then?” 

“It’s for other things,” she said. 

Lampieur did not insist. 

“Yes,” he finished in a dull voice. 

He was filled with an indescribable unease. 
These other things that Leontine had sud¬ 
denly evoked were things that Lampieur had 
constantly in mind, things that he did not 
want her to notice. 

It was evening. Through the open sky¬ 
light Lampieur could see the reddening sky 
filling with a slowly rising down of calm 
and delicate vapor. He remained almost a 
whole minute looking up, then he shook 
himself and turned to Leontine. 

“What things?” he asked painfully. 

Leontine shuddered. 

153 


The Hounded Man 


“Well,” continued Lampieur, trying to 
mask his emotions under an air of assurance, 
“go ahead! . . . What do you mean 

by ‘things’?” 

“My God!” Leontine exclaimed. 

Lampieur went on: 

“We ought to understand each other for 
once, just the same, you with your ‘things’, 
and all your ways of talking. Ever think 
of that?” 

“I can’t.” 

“Ha ha! I thought so,” grumbled Lam¬ 
pieur. “Just because I want to, you don’t. 
That’ll be enough of that! I’ve had enough 
of always coming back to it, and making 
trouble. I can’t stand it any more. . . . 

How about you?” 

He laid his big hand on Leontine’s shoul¬ 
der and added quietly: 

“It’s still your blamed notion, isn’t it?” 

Lampieur did not wait for her answer. 
He withdrew his hand and let it fall heavily. 

“You haven’t any reason for holding your 

154 


The Hounded Man 


notion against me,” he said sullenly. “That’s 
what makes all the trouble between us. 
Don’t say no. Ever since we’ve been to¬ 
gether, there’s always been that notion of 
yours to stand between us. What do you 
want? I don’t dare defend myself against 
it, because you’d only believe it the 
more. . . .” 

Leontine listened without interrupting. 
Not all his words could convince her. They 
were the same he had used before to per¬ 
suade her that he wa^ not guilty. Why 
should he lie again? Why did he take so 
much trouble to make her believe what was 
not true? Leontine knew that Lampieur 
had committeed the Rue Saint Denis crime. 
He had almost confessed it the night she 
fainted. Far more, by his manner, by his 
constant anxiety, Lampieur had only added 
to his confession, in Leontine’s eyes. Did 
he think she hadn’t drawn any conclusions? 
It humiliated her. She was not so dull as 
that. Was he trying to make fun of her? 
155 


The Hounded Man 


No, he couldn’t be making fun of her. He 
was still talking. He talked in a confused, 
strained voice, hoarse at times, and he had 
the awkwardly cunning air of an accused man 
vainly trying to justify himself. 

Still Leontine said nothing. It was he 
who constantly returned to this ‘notion’ and 
fought it in all its shapes. The argument he 
offered was that on the night of the crime, 
when Leontine had dropped her pennies and 
her string, he was sleeping, as was his habit, 
in the woodshed where she had seen his blan¬ 
ket. Wasn’t that proof? What would a 
blanket be doing there if Lampieur didn’t 
go there at times to rest? And for that mat¬ 
ter, why should he have to offer any such 
proof? Had he anything on his conscience? 
If he had, the police would certainly have 
done something. He wasn’t afraid of the 
police. They had only to question him. He 
would answer them, word for word, the same 
way. Besides, if Lampieur had had any 
hand at all in the crime, there would cer- 
156 


The Hounded Man 


tainly be some suspicion. He would have 
been called to headquarters. He would at 
least have been asked to account for his 
movements on that famous night. He’d 
have got the third degree. They’d have 
made him talk! Instead of that, what had 
happened? He was living in perfect peace. 
Nobody bothered with him. No suspicion 
touched him. Could Leontine say anything 
to the contrary? 

“I wouldn’t be the one to say anything, 
you can be sure of that,” she said with low¬ 
ered eyes. 

“Oh! You! You!” exclaimed Lampieur. 
“Even if you did talk . . 

Leontine broke in: 

“But I haven’t anything to talk about,” 
she said timidly. 

“Shut up!” 

He began to stride up and down the room, 
grumbling abuse and every now and then 
throwing angry glances at Leontine. What 
was the matter with him? Leontine fol- 
157 


The Hounded Man 


lowed him with her eyes. Was he going to 
make another scene? The wretched girl 
could not have stood it this time. She had 
come to the end of her courage and the pity 
she had hitherto felt for him had turned to 
bitter resentment. Not only was Lampieur 
treating her as he would not dare treat any¬ 
one else, but he also distrusted her, ^ treated 
her as an enemy—and he repulsed her. 
Leontine felt that she would never succeed 
in making him act differently toward her, 
and she lost heart. Even now, he ignored 
the share she had had in Lampieur’s terrible 
anguish. She had spent herself, worn her¬ 
self out in vain trying to give him by her 
presence a comfort of which he was unaware: 
she remained a stranger to him. If he had 
permitted her to remain with him, it was 
because he was afraid of her, because he 
feared that she might talk some day and 
attract attention to himself. He could laugh, 
he could defy her to tell what she knew; 
still he did not forgive her for know- 


The Hounded Man 


ing. . , . That being the case, Leon- 

tine began to wonder what there was left to 
live for. There was nothing. Everything 
she had tried to do was crumbling, was be¬ 
coming futile. An immense void yawned 
before her ... a desert ... an 
abyss. Leontine gazed into its depth, and 
was filled with a nameless horror that made 
her head reel. 

“Well! ” said Lampieur. “Are you seeing 
things?” 

He had put on his cap, and, under his 
swagger, his cowardice was so evident that 
Leontine was struck by the sight of it. 

“Where are you going?” she asked. 

Lampieur opened the door. 

“You can see for yourself,” he answered. 
“Good night. Pm going down.” 

And he went out hurriedly, without asking 
Leontine to come to dinner with him in Rue 
Saint Denis, as he had done every night. 


159 


Chapter 16 

' ONTINE remained alone in the room, 



and for the first time in many days she 
did not think at once of Lampieur nor of the 
hurt he had given her. 

Twilight spread around her and dimmed 
all the objects in the room. Leontine felt 
astonishingly at ease. What did it matter to 
her that Lampieur had gone? Over there, 
in the lighted streets, in the poor restaurant 
where she could picture him sitting at a 
small table, she felt that he was already re¬ 
gretting having left so suddenly. It would 
certainly change his habitual routine. 
Would he go to work? Leontine could not 
doubt that he would. She had therefore all 
the leisure she needed to make the decision 
that Lampieur’s departure had made neces¬ 
sary. She decided. She expected nothing 


160 


The Hounded Man 


more from such a man. His coarseness, his 
hardness of heart had broken down her last 
resistance. Leontine was no longer sorry 
for him. Instead she felt contempt and re¬ 
sentment toward him, and she no longer suf¬ 
fered. The sense of ease she had felt was 
gaining on her, reaching the depths of her 
being. What a deliverance, what a peace! 
She could not yet believe it, and yet she 
knew that at last, after so much weariness, 
after so many torments, she was at last able 
to relax and to enjoy the calm delights of 
absolute detachment. 

Night was falling, a pure, melting, soft 
night, and, as a silken scarf slips and falls, 
it enveloped Leontine and filled her with 
warmth. Was it perhaps the first night of 
Spring? It had the even and tender power 
of a Spring night over Leontine, who won¬ 
dered at receiving it without tears and with¬ 
out distaste. Still, on a night so different 
from the others, Lampieur must have gone 
out of the restaurant. What thoughts were 
161 


The Hounded Man 


moving him? What obscure emotions? 
Leontine tried to relate them to her own. 
She pictured the street, its lights, its people, 
its shops, its uniform house fronts. Walking 
up this street at this moment, did Lampieur 
feel that the air about him was lighter than 
it had been? She almost hoped so. But no. 
For a man so coarse, nothing would count 
but his security and isolation. He mocked 
at the rest. He was not even aware of it. 
Besides, supposing that Lampieur was partly 
touched by the mysterious presence of this 
night, he would certainly defend himself 
against the feeling as though it were a sud¬ 
den illogical temptation. 

As a matter of fact, Lampieur on the way 
to the bakery felt an unaccountable charm in 
everything about him. Wherever he turned 
his eyes, he met an unaccustomed sight. 
The lights of wineshops shone brilliantly $ 
they gave out so bright and deep a glow that 
one was attracted to them. Doors remained 
open. The yellow light of the street lamps 


The Hounded Man 


lent life to the colors and letters of the 
posters that covered the walls. The side¬ 
walks seemed to have an elastic spring under 
his steps. 

Lampieur gave himself to the influence of 
these discoveries. They came to his aid 5 
they were pleasing to him, and he argued 
from their fortunate effect that he had been 
right in breaking with Leontine and ceasing 
to worry about her. Still, if ever he thought 
of Leontine, all his pleasure fled; it turned to 
anxiety and to lurking irritation. It was not 
natural. Lampieur pulled himself together. 
He set the image of Leontine up against this 
vague pleasure that he felt, and his irritation 
became stronger. It dominated him. It 
filled him with bitterness. Soon he had 
nothing before him but this image ; he 
thought of nothing else, while, as he walked 
up the street, he had no interest any more in 
anything. 

It was at this moment that, up in the room, 
Leontine, having decided to leave Lampieur 
163 


The Hounded Man 


and to try to live as she could, told herself 
that it was time to go, but did not find the 
strength to do so. For more than an hour she 
sat reproaching herself for her weakness. The 
thought that Lampieur would come along in 
the morning to this room, that he would lie 
down in this bed and awaken the next day, 
weakened her resolve. She could not stand 
the idea. For all her efforts to make her¬ 
self accept the idea, for all her desire to go, 
it took an immense effort to rise, to turn 
toward the door, to open it. . . . There 

she nearly lost all her courage. But still the 
door was open, and Leontine had only to 
close it behind her. She thought herself 
saved. Saved from what? Standing among 
the passers-by, Leontine thought it over. 
She was not saved from Lampieur. Never 
had he had a more somber fascination for 
her. Ah, he had her tight. He was strong. 
Even at that distance, the dark power which 
emanated from him retained its morbid at¬ 
traction. Leontine could not escape it. Be- 
164 


The Hounded Man 


sides, did she really want to get away from 
Lampieur? Real as had been her desire, it 
was abandoning her now. It ceased to up¬ 
hold her, and the poor girl realized that she 
was powerless to resist her destiny. 


Chapter 17 

HIS evening was to prove one of the 



JL most uncertain and tormented periods in 
Leontine’s life. She spent the first half of 
it at Fouasse’s, among the girls she knew, 
waiting for Lampieur. But he did not 
come. Toward midnight, she went up Rue 
Saint Denis and began to prowl around the 
bakery. A light shone through the grill. 
This reassured Leontine, who passed it sev¬ 
eral times without stopping, and caught sight 
of Lampieur down in the oven room. One 
o’clock struck. Leontine continued her pa¬ 
trol, reached the end of the street, crossed 
to the other sidewalk. The deserted street 
yawned to the sky. Rare pedestrians passed 
hurriedly on their way to the Market. They 
would reach one of the cross streets, make 
a fleeting, moving silhouette under the light, 


166 


The Hounded Man 


turn and disappear. Others came from the 
opposite direction. Then lurking prostitutes 
emerged from the darkness and accosted 
men. Leontine saw them very clearly from 
afar, going, coming, disappearing, reappear¬ 
ing. She could also see down the street two 
policemen who walked with very slow steps 
in front of a bar, and, at about their level, 
a taxi parked at the door of a hotel. 

The taxi, the policemen, the five of six 
prostitutes and the occasional passers-by, each 
far apart from the others, scarcely disturbed 
the sleeping aspect of the street. Rather 
their silent presence emphasized its air of 
stagnant quietude. Leontine noted the fact. 
She herself moved softly, noiselessly along 
her way, like those people whom she watched 
over there, and she had an odd sensation of 
incoherence. All about her the houses, shoul¬ 
dering the sky, raised to it their stories filled 
with night. Everything slept in the blind 
alleys. Leontine noticed this and, as she 
167 


The Hounded Man 


continued her way, she was surprised to find 
the same calm wherever she looked. 

She did not again feel the softness nor the 
thick and comfortable laxness that had been 
hers in the evening. Instead she had an al¬ 
most voluptuous sense of the wretchedness 
in which she existed. She took some hope 
from her emotion. She realized once again 
that no danger threatened Lampieur and, 
aided by habit, she forgot the scene he had 
recently made and began to think of his re¬ 
joining her in the morning at the bar where 
he always looked for her before returning to 
his room. 

Leontine stopped in front of this bar, but 
it did not open excepting between three and 
four, according to the ordinance, and so she 
did not stay long before its closed front. 
She went on her way and, looking across the 
street, she recognized the entrance of the 
house where Lampieur had committed the 
crime. Usually Leontine did not stop to 
look at the dull front of this house when 
168 


The Hounded Man 


she came to it. She turned her head and 
hurried past. The mere sight of it aroused 
in her an invincible dislike. It frightened 
her. Still it was only a house like the others, 
mean and old. Its entrance, the brown door 
carefully locked since the murder, had noth¬ 
ing to attract attention. During the day 
one could see the bright walls down a long 
hall, the piled-up steps of a stairway, the 
windows of an office. Leontine recalled 
certain details: there was nothing striking 
about them. But as soon as the door was 
closed at night, everything about the house 
seemed funereal. With its shutters closed, 
its inert mass seemed to give it an air of 
strangeness. Did nobody else notice it? 
Did Lampieur—who had not dared pass the 
house for more than a month—not find it 
unpleasant to look at? Several times, as 
he passed it, he had not been able to keep 
back a sudden start. It had not surprised 
Leontine, who herself felt an instinctive hor¬ 
ror of it. The fact that no one but they had 
169 


The Hounded Man 


discovered that such a house seemed, in a 
manner of speaking, to be awaiting some¬ 
thing, frightened Leontine. She wondered 
whether the thing could not take on the 
power of an obsession. 

It was not the first night that Leontine 
had asked herself such an absurd question, 
and had left the question unanswered. But 
on this night, for some alarming reason, she 
did not succeed in freeing herself from a 
horde of vague presentiments. She left her¬ 
self at the mercy of her fears, standing be¬ 
fore the house, searching it with her eyes, 
striving to wrest from it its fearsome secret. 
She could not have said what made her do 
so. More, she realized that to stand so in¬ 
tently before that house was to risk being 
noticed, and arousing} suspicion. Someone 
might be lurking behind one of the closed 
shutters. There was nothing really impos¬ 
sible about that. Leontine’s spine froze at 
the thought. She was seized with panic. 
She took a few steps down the street and, 


The Hounded Man 


immensely impressed by her sudden idea, she 
watched all her movements, and turned her 
head several times. 

Nowhere, up or down the street, could she 
discover anything unusual. The taxi had 
not moved. Far away, people came and 
went at intervals, and the untiring prostitutes 
accosted them, always discreetly, always in 
the same way. Leontine could see them at 
the same spot they had occupied before. 
She could see the taxi, as before. Only the 
policemen had disappeared from behind the 
taxi. 

“Bah!” she thought. “Pm making a fool 
of myself with all these notions. Not much 
chance of a cop standing at the window every 
night to spy on the people who know the 
house! What a dream!” 

She nevertheless felt ill at ease, and 
started toward the Market whose noisy ani¬ 
mation would dispel the painful thoughts 
she found so hard to shake olf. There, in 
the racket of the wagons and among 
171 


The Hounded Man 

the busy workmen, she lost some of her anx¬ 
iety. The men carefully lining up cases and 
baskets along the sidewalks diverted her 
sight. She watched them. Then her at¬ 
tention turned to the butcher shop where 
men bent under immense quarters of 
meat bore them from the wagons to the 
hooks where they were hung. A stale, sick¬ 
ening odor filled the air. Farther on in the 
building, dealers in sausages, fried fish and 
bacon were selling their wares at twenty 
sous a portion. There was a queue before 
their stands, and another before that of an 
old woman who ladled soup into the bowls 
that each held out in turn. Leontine passed 
by all these eaters. She was not hungry. 
An occasional slip on some rotting garbage 
warned her to watch her step. Here high 
tumbrils of cabbage were being unloaded; 
there, lettuce; farther on, other vegetables. 
The smell of earth and water, fresh and 
abundant, exuded from the wagons. It sud¬ 
denly evoked a vision of market gardens with 
172 


The Hounded Man 

well-watered beds such as there are on the 
outskirts of the city, and Leontine remem¬ 
bered Sundays in the suburbs, when she went 
to visit her baby, and helped it to walk 
around the garden. She had been almost 
happy then. Her life had had some mean¬ 
ing. She did nothing but save up the child’s 
weekly keep, buy toys, clothing, linen, 
sweets. What love she put into these little 
things! What intimate pleasure and tender¬ 
ness she felt! Then the baby died. It had 
been buried out there, in the country, and 
the strong earthy odor that Leontine now 
smelled seemed an after-taste of the hor¬ 
rible memory of the narrow pit in which 
rested her son. She re-lived all her grief 
in thought, to the gray and rainy day in 
May on which had been held the pathetic 
funeral in a country where no one knew her. 
Yes, it was the very same smell of freshly 
turned earth that Leontine had breathed 
through her tears. She had not forgotten 
it: it was a garden smell, almost pleasant, 
173 


The Hounded Man 


almost comforting. How strange! Even 
in so inhospitable a place, it would have been 
easy that night for Leontine to indulge to 
the full her will to suffer in a mournful re¬ 
hearsal of her old sorrow. 

Everything invited her to it. Her break 
with Lampieur, her cowardice toward him, 
her imaginations, her terrors. . . . All 

these painful things had had their effect upon 
her. They had prepared the way for the 
worst distress, they had made her so ready 
for self-torture that she felt a sort of pain¬ 
ful satisfaction in it. So many torments and 
trials were too much. She counted them up: 
it seemed to her she could stand no more. 
Their sum gave her to hope that fate would 
have mercy on her, that an easier future 
would make up to her for her present pain. 

“Hey there, kid!” came a man’s voice 
from behind her. 

Leontine took to her heels. 

“Well, what’s the matter?” mumbled the 
voice. 


174 


The Hounded Man 


It was that of a drunk who, offering his 
sympathy to Leontine, had hoped she would 
listen and perhaps keep him from having to 
go home alone. 

“As you like,” he finished, with perfect 
dignity. 

Leontine was already far. She crossed the 
Market and, taking Turbigo street, was 
hurrying toward the neighborhood of the 
bakery, to watch over it. Her recent anguish 
had given place to a strange need to be near 
Lampieur. He alone counted with her at 
this moment. She forgave his faults. She 
was attracted toward him. From the posi¬ 
tion of the rigs and the cluttered appearance 
of the sidewalk, Leontine realized clearly 
that it was half-past two. She hastened her 
step, turned the corner of Rue Saint 
Denis. . . . 

As she reached the grill with its glowing 
light she saw, a little farther on, erect and 
motionless, a man staring at the entrance of 
a house, and she recognized Lampieur. 

175 


Chapter 18 

HAT?” he answered. “It’s you 



again?” 


“You must go away from here,” she com¬ 
manded in a confused and strained voice. 

“What?” said Lampieur. 

He did not seem to understand. Never¬ 
theless he followed Leontine and let himself 
be led along the dull house fronts that 
bordered the sidewalk. 

“You! . . . You! . . .” was all 

he said as he walked. “You’ve come 
back. . . . Ah! Ah! You’ve come 


back. . . .” 


“What were you doing there?” asked 
Leontine. 

Lampieur felt a sort of somber joy. 
“That’s my business,” he said. 


176 


The Hounded Man 

He added, “Pm free to go where I like, 
ain’t I?” 

“Come . . . come along,” begged 

Leontine. She led him to a nearby street, 
sometimes pulling him by the arm, saying 
that she had something very important to 
tell him that concerned him. Lampieur 
turned a curious eye on her, and shook his 
head. Nevertheless he accompanied her, 
and she did not ask for more. 

When they were in the next street, Lam¬ 
pieur stopped. 

“Well,” he began. “What’s all this? 
What does it mean?” 

“There was some one spying,” Leontine 
said. 

“Someone?” 

“Yes, someone behind the shutter,” she 
declared. 

Lampieur thought this over. 

“Huh!” he grunted. “You’re sure?” 

He seemed to awaken from a heavy torpor, 
and his face took on a fearful, anguished 
177 


The Hounded Man 


expression that moved Leontine and aroused 
all her zeal. 

“It was to be expected,” Lampieur mur¬ 
mured at length. “Sure. It’s a fine fix.” 

“We could leave the quarter . . .” 

Leontine suggested. 

“What did you say?” 

“I said it would be better not to stay here,” 
she repeated humbly. “Don’t you think 
so?” 

“It’s a question,” said Lampieur. “Where 
would we go?” 

“We would leave. . . .” 

“No,” he declared. “I don’t want to 
leave here. . . . Besides, it would be 
the same thing. . . . You think it 
would make any difference?” 

“Still . . .” 

“No. Absolutely no,” said Lampieur 
stubbornly. “In the first place, if you’re so 
sure there’s somebody behind the shutter, 
you must have seen him. Answer me! If 
you saw him, why didn’t you tell me?” 

178 


Tlie Hounded Mail 


“It was just a minute ago,” Leontine ex¬ 
plained. “I stopped here. . . .” 

“In front of the house? ” 

“Yes,” she had to admit. 

Lampieur rocked on his heels and, looking’ 
Leontine in the eyes, he breathed deeply* and 
said nothing. 

“We can’t remain this way,” she faltered. 

She moved close to him. 

“Behind what shutters?” he asked. 

“On the first floor. . . .” 

“The swine!” commented Lampieur. 

He seemed to make a sudden decision, and 
stopped rocking himself to look intently into 
Leontine’s eyes, to read the thoughts that 
they held. Leontine turned her head to 
escape his scrutiny, took his arm, and said 
with an effort: 

“Pm not lying. Oh please come. Listen 
to me. The man over there in the house 
must have some idea now. He’ll accuse 
you. . . 

“What idea?” 


179 


The Hounded Man 


“Why, that it’s you,” she said. 

Lampieur shuddered. 

“Come! ” she insisted. 

She tried to cling closer to him, to keep 
him from leaving her. It was in vain. 
With one movement he freed himself, and 
took two or three quick steps before he stag¬ 
gered and clung to the wall. 

Leontine hurried to him. 

“Get away! Beat it! Get to hell out of 
here!” he snapped at her. “I’ll go alone.” 

“Lean on me,” she begged. 

He looked at her severely. 

“What? You?” he asked, trying to hurt 
her. 

“I’ll go too,” she murmured. 

Supporting Lampieur, Leontine soon 
found herself back in Rue Saint Denis. 
She did not know what she was doing. 
Neither did Lampieur. He was livid. As 
Leontine helped him along he kept repeat¬ 
ing: 

“I’ll go. . . . I’ll go. . . .” 

180 


The Hounded Man 


Where did he want to go? Leontine did 
not dare ask him for fear of irritating him 
more and yet she feared that, under the spell 
of his crime, he intended to stop in front of 
the house where he had committed it. If 
that was his intention, what would happen? 
Leontine was sure, now, that there was some¬ 
one in the house, and that it was too late to 
escape his invisible watch. Had she not al¬ 
ready, without meaning to, awakened his 
first suspicion? She reproached herself for 
her carelessless, without hoping to mend its 
result. The only thing to do was to flee. 
Why was Lampieur so averse to it? Leon¬ 
tine could not understand. On the other 
hand, could she abandon him without mak¬ 
ing one last effort to help him in his be¬ 
wilderment? He seemed to have lost all 
notion of everything. He groaned. He 
repeated over and over the same words. 

“Why yes,” said Leontine. “Take it 
easy. . . .” 

“Let’s go,” said Lampieur. 

181 


The Hounded Man 


Suddenly he made an incoherent gesture, 
spoke some words devoid of any meaning 
and, glancing about him with the eyes of a 
madman he began to shake while his teeth 
chattered. 

“We must go in,” Leontine advised. 

Lampieur made a sign to silence her. 

“No, no,” she amended quickly, “instead 
I’ll tell them at the bakery that you couldn’t 
stay. Let me lead you. . . . Do you 

mind?” 

They stood for a short moment, facing 
each other, without a word. Lampieur 
could not stop his trembling. Bars were 
beginning to open up along the street, 
passers-by became more frequent, girls were 
returning by twos and threes from the Mar¬ 
ket to go to bed. They were no longer look¬ 
ing for men. They were like horses on the 
way to the stable who feel the reins hanging 
loosely in the harness. Leontine, who had 
been one of them, envied them. She re¬ 
membered her one great moment, the glow 
182 


The Hounded Man 


that it had 5 she remembered her one intoxi¬ 
cation. Alas! There remained of all 
that but a memory mingled with bitterness 
and useless regrets. Was it her fault? 
Lampieur was most to blame. But for him, 
but for the fascination he had exerted over 
Leontine, she would never have thought of 
changing her life, or rather she would never 
have felt the need to redeem herself. To 
what had that idea brought her? Leontine 
could see it well, and she felt an overwhelm¬ 
ing sadness. 

“Come,” she murmured at length, with¬ 
out conviction. “Are we going?” 

Lampieur took her arm and, leading her 
while clinging to her, he made her turn back 
and take a long detour which enabled them 
to evade the eyes of the man who awaited 
them over there, in the house, as they 
thought. 


183 


Chapter 19 

HIS man became their one preoccupa¬ 



tion for some time. He never left their 


thoughts. They saw him everywhere. The 
terror he inspired was intolerable. Lam- 
pieur could no longer sleep. He lay awake 
all day in his room, crouching between the 
sheets, staring dully at the door-handle. 
It seemed to him at times that, outside, a 
hand was on the door, that the knob was 
about to turn. He would close his 
eyes. . . . His heart palpitated madly. 

Then, to give himself courage to look again 
at the door, he repeated to himself that the 
door was double-locked, and the key in the 
hole. This certainty only half reassured 
him. He was afraid. He perspired with 
fear in his bed and Leontine, who slept no 


184 


The Hounded Man 


more than he, felt seized in her turn with a 
horror that froze her to the bone. 

Several days passed thus, however, and 
nothing happened. Lampieur had resumed 
his work. Leontine accompanied him to the 
shop, but she had no longer the courage to 
walk the streets as before, nor to go to the 
bar where Lampieur met her. The house 
of terror stood between this bar and the bake- 
shop, so Leontine turned toward the Market. 
There she found her companions, and, 
mingling with them, she gained a new life. 
They went together to Fouasse’s, and Leon¬ 
tine offered them to drink; she answered 
their questions; she talked to forget herself. 
It pleased her. It was a change from Lam¬ 
pieur and the ghastly hours she spent with 
him. Later, Lampieur would come. He 
sat at the table with Leontine, and the girls, 
after drinking with him, withdrew and left 
them alone. 

“See you again!” Leontine called to them. 

Monsieur Fouasse came near. 

185 


The Hounded Man 


“Well!” he asked Lampieur, whose wor¬ 
ried air had made him wonder for some time. 
“Things going badly?” 

Lampieur shrugged his shoulders. 

“Bah!” the barkeeper continued. “You 
mustn’t let things worry you. Monsieur Fran- 
gois. . . .” 

“Oh, yes,” Lampieur grumbled. 

Leontine, ill at ease between these two 
men who stood facing each other without 
finding anything more to say, smiled mechan¬ 
ically, with a timid and resigned air. 

She found it hard now to stand Lampieur 
and to share his anxieties; they were too 
painful to her. Besides, Lampieur was 
becoming so strange that Leontine could no 
longer follow to the end his incoherent ex¬ 
pressions. What made him torture himself 
so? He should get the better of it. But 
no. It was not permitted him. Instead of 
feeling himself more free from fear for hav¬ 
ing just missed falling into a trap, as the days 
went by he could only imagine new traps 
186 


The Hounded Man 


laid everywhere for him. He unburdened 
himself to Leontine. He told her of his 
fears, and at times, driven by an imperious 
need to make of her a confidant, he spoke 
to her of his crime, approached it by such 
direct allusions that he was filled with a 
somber fever and gave Leontine new cause 
for apprehension. 

The wretched girl tried in vain to break 
him of the taste he seemed to have for tell¬ 
ing her the story of his crime. He was 
obsessed with it. He went into the minutest 
detail. Leontine did not listen. She re¬ 
called the time when Lampieur treasured his 
black secret and was determined to let no one 
possess it. Why should he now find pleas¬ 
ure in mixing Leontine up in all that sordid 
business? She was no longer curious. The 
more Lampieur confided in her, the more 
she drew away from him and showed a 
cold hostility. Lampieur saw nothing of it. 
On the contrary he thought that by acting 
as he did he dominated Leontine and made 

187 


The Hounded Man 


of her an intimate and proved ally. Had 
she not been fascinated by the crime from 
the very first? Lampieur saw no farther 
than that. His egotism made Leontine nec¬ 
essary to him, and he gave himself up to her 
while giving himself up to the ghastly 
pleasures of his memories. 


18 8 


Chapter 20 


ONTINE was not deceived. She had a 



JL J clear image of what her condition would 
be if she continued to live with Lampieur 
and to use up in torment what strength was 
left to her. If Lampieur had been harsh 
toward her, no matter how much she had 
been deceived, Leontine would have forgiven 
him. She had only to retreat into her own 
illusions. But now it was very different. 
His cowardice was only too apparent. He 
displayed it so gratuitously that she could 
not overlook it, or escape a feeling of dis¬ 
gust. To Leontine’s disgust was added an 
obscure resentment. What did it matter to 
her if Lampieur sometimes accused himself 
of a crime in her presence? He was telling 
her nothing new. Did he hope to win her 
sympathy? It was too late now. As for 


189 


The Hounded Man' 


the sense of horror that the recital aroused, 
Leontine did not waitt it. She had had 
enough. The regret she had felt the other 
night at sight of the five or? six girls coming' 
from the Market was working on her. She 
thought of the time when, like these girls, 
she walked up the same street, with the same 
carelessness. Where had that time gone? 
Leontine asked herself: Would it ever re¬ 
turn? She sighed for it. At least those 
girls, for all the servitude in which they 
spent their nights, were free during the day. 
Leontine contrasted her ruined life with 
theirs. She must certainly have lost her 
mind to have been willing to live with Lam- 
pieur as she did when she might have re¬ 
mained what she was and never wished for 
anything to change her way of living. Only 
now did she realize what a terrible mistake 
she had made. She thought of it bitterly, 
and now her only desire was to forget her 
misstep and return as fast as possible to her 
old condition. 


190 


The Hounded Man 


She was so evidently determined that Lam- 
pieur noticed it. 

“What’s the matter with you?” he first 
asked her. 

But she did not answer. She shut her¬ 
self up in a heavy silence, glanced at him and 
dropped her head. 

“There’s something the matter,” com¬ 
mented Lampieur. 

Soon Leontine refused to accompany him, 
and he began to wonder what she did while 
he worked, and to take alarm. He had no 
confidence in those girls. He knew they 
were gossips and ready for mischief. 
Wouldn’t they provoke Leontine to talk to 
them about him? He was at the mercy of 
a talkative woman. This made him more 
careful, more somber, gave him moments 
of temper. What sort of madness had led 
him to confide in Leontine? It was certainly 
the most serious kind of madness, for if 
ever Leontine let fall a word of what he 
had confessed, she would not know how to 
191 


The Hounded Man 


deny it. And even if she did? Lampieur 
was thrown into despair. He felt his last 
hope slipping. He foresaw the end. 

Any other man would not have hesitated: 
he would have fled. Lampieur could not 
make up his mind. The reason that had de¬ 
termined his conduct the day after the crime 
still prevailed. It was less a reason than a 
form of cowardice, an inconsistency. He 
could see it, but his seeing it did not help. 
Besides, his terror of arrest robbed him of 
all initiative and made him morbidly fatalis¬ 
tic. It acted upon him directly5 it for¬ 
bade resistance. What could he do against 
such an idea? He had no taste even for 
trying to outwit it, even to wrestle with it 
for the sake of his peace, even to hope for 
any chance to put off for a single moment 
his imminent fate. An urge more power¬ 
ful even than that of self-protection had him 
in its grip. Lampieur did not resist it. He 
drifted. And his drifting gave him at last 
almost a sense of peace, a strange numbness 
192 


The Hounded Man 

like a sort of powerful and automatic drunk¬ 
enness. 

Yes, it was drunkenness. . . . Lam- 

pieur realized it. It was made manifest in 
a hundred ways, always the same, and it 
seemed that their madness was all the greater 
because of Leontine. Lampieur clung to 
Leontine in his frenzy. He craved to be¬ 
lieve that she would not speak. He wanted 
to persuade himself that she would remain 
his accomplice, no matter what happened. 
Was it too much to ask? At times he felt 
it was not. At other times his confidence 
deserted him and then he resolved to 
force Leontine to tell him what she in¬ 
tended to do, and whether she intended him 
harm. 

Leontine had no cause to tell what she 
knew, nor even to feel harshly toward Lam¬ 
pieur, now that she had half regained her 
liberty. She admitted it quite simply. But 
this half-freedom did not satisfy her. 

“Naturally,” Lampieur reproached her. 
193 


The Hounded Man 


“Now that things are getting hot, you want 
to go away.” 

“Maybe,” she said. 

Lampieur wilted. 

“What if it didn’t please me?” he asked, 
without conviction. 

Leontine gave a little laugh. 

“Just because I’ve let you leave me alone,” 
continued Lampieur, “don’t get the idea that 
you can order me around.” 

Leontine began to laugh softly. 

“Enough of that!” Lampieur scolded. 
“If that’s what you’ve learned from the 
women you frequent, you’ve learned it well.” 

“Oh!” giggled Leontine. “The women 
I frequent. . . .” 

Lampieur looked at her. 

“I know what I’m talking about,” he de¬ 
clared, “I saw it well enough after we began 
to go back to Fouasse’s. Am I right?” 

They were just coming out of the bar, and, 
quarreling aloud in the street, they started 
for their room. Leontine dragged her steps. 
194 


The Hounded Man 


She did not want to go home. Lampieur 
stopped abruptly. 

“Go ahead!” he commanded. 

“Oh! ” said Leontine, stopping and taking 
on a mocking air. “So he’s getting angry!” 

Lampieur advanced toward her. 

“So long!” she said, and started quickly 
away, without any explanation and without 
giving him time to recover from his surprise. 


195 


Chapter 21 

HERE is no describing the day that 



X followed for Lampieur. He fell into 
profound depression. His distress was ter¬ 
rible. It grew, in his room, upon his mem¬ 
ories of Leontine, of their common suffering, 
of their strange intimacy, of the habit they 
had gradually formed of suffering for each 
other. Now that he found himself alone in 
the presence of so much pain, he felt it would 
become too great for him. What was he to 
do? Where could he find, weak as he 
was, the courage to see his cause through 
to the end? It was lost from the start. 
So long as Leontine had helped him to bear 
up under his troubles, nothing had mattered 
to him very much. They touched him only 
indirectly. But now that Leontine was no 
longer there to protect him, Lampieur 


196 


The Hounded Man 


tremblingly felt himself disarmed, and he 
wretchedly awaited the first strokes of fate 
without any will to resist. Hitherto, despite 
their violence, his troubles had not touched 
Lampieur in his weakest spot. What new 
distress would rise up now? What secret 
depths would now be harrowed? In his 
cowardice, Lampieur almost went mad at the 
mere thought of what threatened his spirit. 
He feared everything equally. The more 
he thought, the more fearsome seemed his 
fate, the more his horror grew at the knowl¬ 
edge that there was no escape. 

That is why Lampieur missed Leontine. 
She was no longer there to distract him from 
his torment and to arouse his irritation 
against herself. He saw this so clearly that 
he shuddered. How could the fact have 
escaped him until then? He called to Leon- 
tine. What was he to become without her? 
Already the mere understanding of what she 
had meant to him was a warning of new 
torments. How fearful would they be? 
197 


The Hounded Man 


Despite his certainty of impending doom, he 
still found a sense of security in the memory 
of Leontine, and he clung to that memory 
with the despair of a man who sees the void 
opening beneath his feet, and feels its fasci¬ 
nation. 

Then his last resources left him. Lam- 
pieur found himself alone in the world, and 
he began to experience an unexpected pain. 
It seemed to him that something in him de¬ 
manded this pain in order to be reborn. It 
astonished him at first. He was undergoing 
a transformation of all his ways, awaking 
to the sense of an existence of which he had 
not had the humblest notion since the day 
of his crime. What could such a transfor¬ 
mation mean? Where would it lead? Lam- 
pieur could not tell. He was like a man 
who, in an accident, seeing all his life pass 
before him, receives a disconcerting impres¬ 
sion. ... It was all a surprise. He 
momentarily wished to pull himself together, 
to return to Leontine—but that was no 
198 


The Hounded Man 


longer possible. In fact, Leontine’s depart¬ 
ure was the direct cause of the phenomenon 
that Lampieur was experiencing. He had 
to stand its consequences. He resigned him¬ 
self. He gave himself up to them and, 
little by little, as his mind cleared, he began 
to realize how strictly just was his present 
isolation. He blamed himself fully, with 
bitter sincerity. 

Led on by this sincerity, Lampieur little 
by little came to feel pity for himself. He 
began to go back in his thoughts to the crime. 
In all the time it had been in his thoughts, 
he had never yet faced it in all its terrors 
nor delved into the depths of its horror. 
This time, Lampieur recollected the motives 
which had led him to his crime. The same 
loneliness in which he now dwelt had been 
his lot. It gave him a sense of uselessness, 
of self-contempt, of distress. . . . He 

recalled it all. Of all his life that period 
had been the most absurd. His days had 
been of one obsessing monotony, his nights 
199 


The Hounded Man 


each as long and ineffectual as the other 
What was the sense in going on? he had 
often asked himself. He had no vices. He 
was bored. Each evening as he came from 
his room, he reflected that the next day 
would bring precisely the same routine at 
precisely the same hour, that tomorrow he 
would go again to Fouasse’s, and again drink 
another glass of the same wine. It humili¬ 
ated him, it hurt him. The people he lis¬ 
tened to around him seemed barren of the 
slightest interest. He watched them never¬ 
theless, he studied them as though they 
were grotesque toys which seemed to live 
but did not live at all. And he was just like 
them. Like them he leaned against the 
bar, smoked, came, went. . . . Was 

that called living? He was deathly sick of 
it all. 

Under his rough exterior Lampieur hid 
a constant unrest. Everything troubled him. 
It became like an intolerable mania, and 
Lampieur did not know how to control it. 

200 


The Hounded Man 


Lampieur came to have an opinion of him¬ 
self which nothing seemed to justify, but 
which nevertheless brought him some solace. 
He considered himself so different from the 
others that he found little trouble in believ¬ 
ing that he was. Believing it, he soon con¬ 
cluded it was best not to let anyone know, 
and he bent his efforts to this end. It flat¬ 
tered his vanity. Then by the weight of 
circumstances his satisfaction lessened, his 
unrest returned, again he became the victim 
of his own anxiety. 

From that day, everything made him dis¬ 
gusted with himself 5 he spent several weeks 
in an incoherent mood, tormenting himself, 
worrying that he no longer found interest in 
anything, and awaiting the day that would 
offer him a desperate chance to retrieve his 
self-respect. Lampieur had always been a 
coward, and he wondered anxiously what 
trial fate might offer to test him, when, 
one morning, in the bakeshop, a certain Ma¬ 
dame Courte, a caretaker, had ingenuously 
201 


The Hounded Man 


complained of having to keep the rent money 
each rent day. 

Despite his best efforts, Lampieur was no 
longer master of himself that day. He did 
not go to bed. He could be seen from 
morning to night, drinking in the bars of the 
quarter and staring at his neighbors with in¬ 
solent eyes. He finished by getting nearly 
drunk. . . . 

His manners and his bearing astonished 
those who knew him. He exaggerated every 
gesture, and betrayed an exaltation so grotes¬ 
que that Lampieur alone failed to perceive 
his condition. He could not help himself. 
His thoughts were all for that caretaker. 
He felt that the hour of decision had come 
at last, and he felt himself ready for it. 
For him it was like the news of sudden suc¬ 
cess after all hope had been abandoned. It 
was like a deliverance. He became bold. 
The wine intoxicated him less than his ambi¬ 
tion and, two or three days later, he had no 
more doubts of his impending success. 

202 


The Hounded Man 


He had from October to January to pre¬ 
pare himself, and he laid out for himself a 
detailed program. First he worked out his 
project, then he prepared to carry it out. 
Who could have guessed what was going on 
in his mind? He left the bakery at sunrise 
and, sometimes, instead of going down the 
street he reversed his steps and threw a 
searching glance in passing down the long 
hall which he proposed to enter. 

The caretaker’s lodge was at the end, on 
the right. It opened on a courtyard. One 
evening when the caretaker was out, Lam- 
pieur inspected this court. He found it had 
no outlet. But at every story windows 
opened on it, as did a window of the lodge. 
Lampieur feared that through this someone 
might see from the court into the lodge. 
He came closer, studied it at length, and went 
away reassured, having seen a curtain hang¬ 
ing at one side which must be drawn across 
at night. 

Toward the end of December, Lampieur 
203 


The Hounded Man 


was ready. He had his plan well in mind. 
He knew the name of the tenant he would 
ring so as not to disturb the caretaker in her 
sleep. Only at that point was there any com¬ 
plication. The key was not sufficient to let 
him into the lodge. There was also a bolt 
which would have to be forced with a dexter¬ 
ous blow, quickly and noiselessly. This bolt 
offered the most serious problem. Lampieur 
solved it the very evening of the crime. He 
entered the lodge, unscrewed the socket of 
the bolt, and fixed it so it would come off 
without resistance. This done he returned to 
his room, put gloves, a suit, and a pair of 
shoes in a parcel, and went to work. He was 
calm. The suit into which he changed after 
carefully brushing it, the shoes he put on, 
bore not a speck of flour. He had carefully 
washed himself in the cellar. He started out 
as the clock struck a quarter to twelve, and it 
was not until he returned that he clearly 
realized the risks he had run, and the dangers 
204 


The Hounded Man 


against which he would have to guard daily, 
all about him. 

“The old woman! . . he cried sud¬ 
denly, with a start. 

He had been dreaming, sitting erect on his 
bed, fully clothed. Before him he saw 
the hapless woman who had been his victim. 
. . . He thought he heard her. His fingers 
seemed upon her throat, and between them 
he could feel the palpitating, swollen flesh. 
It was ghastly. Slowly he relaxed his grip, 
and, still half in the power of his hallucina¬ 
tion, he tried to release himself while, beside 
him, the body of his victim dropped heavily 
among the sheets. 

At that moment Lampieur could not have 
told where he was. He rose from the bed 
in horror, and the ghastly vision rose too. 
It spread before his eyes wherever he turned. 
Lampieur shook herself. . . Why should 

he be pacing his room like a caged animal? 
Thank God, he had not yet come to that! 
The thought that he could do as he pleased 
205 


The Hounded Man 


reassured him. The thought nevertheless 
seemed stupid. It seemed so reasonable 
that he did not know what to make of 
it. Was he really free, with the frightful 
image of the old woman haunting him to 
the point where he felt he needed nothing 
but to be rid of it? He would have liked to 
think so, but the vision persisted. It accom- 
pained him, obsessed him, hounded him. 
For all his efforts it reigned all about him; 
fight as he would, it reigned over him as well, 
and tormented him relentlessly. 

At last he gave up resisting the tenacious 
presence of the vision, and tried to accustom 
himself to it. At once his attitude changed. 
His shoulders dropped, his face shriveled, 
and, with a shudder that shook his whole 
being he collapsed under a misfortune so 
frightful that he lost all sense of everything 
but an overwhelming horror of himself and 
of the evil that tortured him. 

This horror surpassed everything in abom¬ 
ination. He beheld the vision of a narrow, 
206 


The Hounded Man 


tumbled bed, across which lay a corpse, in 
mournful and tragic immobility. Then, 
over the bed, spread the presence of Death. 
It was so heavy that a hole began to gape 
among the sheets. Lampieur felt engulfed 
into it irresistibly. He felt the touch of a 
cold cadaver. He struggled with it desper¬ 
ately. Alas! The more he struggled, the 
more vivid grew the feeling of being hope¬ 
lessly mired in the bed’s ghastly hole. The 
corpse dragged him down deeper and deeper, 
and his futile cries rose louder and more 
desperate. . . . 

There came no answer to his awful cry. 
He himself had no answer. He felt him¬ 
self dragged into ghastly depths, down to 
the very refuse which he disturbed at every 
moment, the stench and the mad terror. He 
gasped for breath. His strength was gone, 
he had lost all hope. The whole world was 
abandoning him, and, to top it all, Lampieur 
himself was powerless in the face of his 
nameless torture. 


207 


Chapter 22 

E MPIEUR remained in his room until 
night, crying out, begging for an an¬ 
swer, powerless to calm his tortured mind. 

He went out at about seven o’clock, locked 
his door, and went down. His face was 
blanched. He shook so violently that no 
one could help noticing him. Lampieur did 
not care. He hugged the shop fronts as he 
went along, staring with dazzled eyes at the 
lights. They fascinated him. They pro¬ 
duced in him a sort of drunkenness. Several 
times he halted before a window and stood 
there with glittering eyes. His eyes seemed 
to ask so strange a question that passers-by 
were startled. 

What sort of a man could this be? Each 
person that Lampieur passed turned to stare 
208 


The Hounded Man 


at him. But Lampieur saw no one, and ex¬ 
pected from no one the succor he craved. 

His steps led him instinctively toward 
Fouasse’s saloon. Lampieur noticed it. He 
recognized the entrance to the bar, its win¬ 
dows, its counter. He did not go in. He 
turned to the left, passed more shop win¬ 
dows, walking with a bearing that struck 
everyone he met, and found himself in Rue 
Saint-Denis. 

Between its somber houses the street pre¬ 
sented a narrow, oblique vista. Here and 
there a light revealed the lines of a house, 
a strip of a sidewalk, a bit of roadway against 
a background of darkness. Lampieur stared 
sullenly at these spots of light and, as he ad¬ 
vanced, he grew more and more down¬ 
cast. . . . 

Where was he going? He moved from 
force of habit only. He was not going to 
work tonight. 

Something else awaited him over there, 
and he moved toward it anxiously, with a 
209 


The Hounded Man 


question in his mind which grew more and 
more pressing, and made him quicken his 
steps. 

In the short time it took to reach the level 
of the bakery this question assailed him with 
such force that he barely escaped stopping 
on the way and sinking into the gutter. 
What made him suffer so? His recent vision 
choked him to the bursting point with de¬ 
grading emotions. He could not endure its 
flavor, its atrocious repulsiveness. His legs 
were betraying him. His sight swam with 
vertigo. He was smothering. He groaned. 
Far better to die twenty times than to live 
under such conditions, and he felt an infinite 
terror at the thought that there might be 
awaiting him a more intimate and more 
abominable horror. 

The trouble was that now Lampieur held 
himself responsible for his distress, and de¬ 
spaired of placating his fate even by giving 
way to the most cruel remorse. He re¬ 
gretted his crime. He held it in utter ab- 
210 


The Hounded Man 


horrence. His conscience was in full revolt. 
. . . Could he abase himself more than 

that? He was ready to do so if he could. 
He would have thrown himself on the tomb 
of the old woman and wept bitter tears upon 
it if by that he could have purchased a little 
peace. His cowardice refused no form of 
humiliation. Rather it craved them all. It 
yearned to be succored, to be spared. . . . 

Was Lampieur really responsible? In his 
madness he clung to the frailest support. 
He called to witness a thousand proofs of his 
former honesty—it was not his fault that 
he had committed such a crime! Could he 
foresee the fearful effect it would have on 
him some day? 

He did not ask for much—a moment’s re¬ 
spite, a minute, a second. . . . Would 

he be vouchsafed not even that? Why not 
even that? Did not his supplications prove 
his utter sincerity? Pity! He would beg 
on his knees! He would strike his breast! 
He would mortify himself in a thousand 
211 


The Hounded Man 


ways! Would he be repulsed again? Was 
there still greater punishment in store? He 
accepted it. . . . What? Was that not 

enough? What was he to do? He had 
only to be told. He was ready to obey. 
He had no argument to offer. . . . 

“Move on! ” He seemed to hear the com¬ 
mand ring in the very depths of his body. 

Lampeur lowered his head and moved on. 
He reached the bakery, jerked open the door, 
went down to the cellar. 

A workman he did not know stood at the 
oven. 

“Are you the fellow I had to replace?” 
asked the latter. 

“Yes,” said Lampieur. 

He went to the wall, scraped, removed a 
large stone, took the money that lay in the 
aperture, put it into his pocket and hurried 
away without even answering the stupefied 
“Good-night” that accompanied his exit. 

Once outside, Lampieur did not have far 
to go to reach the house he felt a need to see 
212 


The Hounded Man 


again. He approached the house, studied 
its front, then the door, drew back, crossed 
several times from one sidewalk to the 
other. . . . He felt something almost 

like relief, or, at least, his distress seemed to 
give place to recollections so precise that they 
absorbed his mind and saved him from him¬ 
self. 

“Yes, yes,” he muttered. 

Once that door had opened. Lampieur 
had closed it behind him. He remembered 
the snap of the bell-cord and the click of the 
lock which answered his ring. 

Then he had entered. He had walked down 
the hall, had reached the end. . 

What memories! Each was a perfect link 
in the chain of events that led Lampieur 
down that awful hall. They made him re¬ 
live the minutes that preceded his crime. 
So realistic and powerful was the atmosphere 
surrounding him that at moments he expected 
to see the door open once more and let him 
in. . . . At such moments he retreated 

213 


The Hounded Man 


a step or two. . . . He passed to the 

opposite sidewalk and, striving to contain 
the macaber exaltation that gripped him, he 
emitted strange words, and could not keep 
from walking up an down, gesticulating. 

It was not possible that Lampieur could 
stand before such a house and not be noticed. 
Neighbors saw him. They watched him. 
One of them decided to accost him, but Lam¬ 
pieur did not recognize him, and continued 
his performance. The neighbors disap¬ 
peared. They went into their houses, but re¬ 
appeared at their windows where they sat and 
exchanged comments. . . . What was 

that man doing there? Was he drunk? 
They followed his strange actions in the 
street, watched him start, stop, advance again. 
What was the meaning of such a perform¬ 
ance? None dared give his opinion, but each 
thought the same. They became indignant. 

“Hey there! If you please,” called out 
the one who had accosted Lampieur. 
“Hadn’t you better beat it?” 

214 


The Hounded Man 


Lampieur raised his head. He noticed all 
these people spying on him from their win¬ 
dows. He stood his ground, glaring at them 
with sharp, suspicious eyes. 

“We’ll send for the police!” cried a 
woman’s voice. 

“The police! ” repeated Lampieur. “Oh! 
The police!” 

He burst out laughing stupidly and, 
shrugging his shoulders, made as if to go. 
Other windows had opened. From one side 
of the street to the other exclamations, an¬ 
swers, shreds of sentences were exchanged. 
Lampieur understood his indiscretion. He 
started, fled, almost ran to the first corner, 
turned it, and found himself rapidly striding 
down Sebastopol boulevard. , , , 


215 


Chapter 23 

I T was scarcely past eleven when Lampieur 
came down Sebastopol boulevard. Not 
five minutes later, despite the long detour he 
took, he found himself again on Rue Saint 
Denis at the Square des Innocents. Only 
then did he regain confidence, and a sigh of 
strange satisfaction escaped from his breast. 
His steps slowed down 5 he rounded the 
square and as he walked in its neighborhood 
the image of Leontine little by little took 
the place of the old woman’s, and his torment 
lessened. It was here, in front of the en¬ 
tries to low hotels, that Leontine and her 
kind carried on their business. Lampieur 
began to look for her. He questioned sev¬ 
eral girls, passed them, lost himself in the 
dark streets, then, retracing his steps, took 
216 


The Hounded Man 


his stand and waited for fate to bring him 
the one he wanted. 

There was, in fact, a strong likelihood that 
the girl would soon reach one of these pecul¬ 
iar hotels. Lampieur saw Madame Berthe 
come in with a passer-by. A little later, he 
recognized Renee. Madame Berthe came 
out. She returned almost immediately with 
another man, and Lampieur moved away for 
fear of being recognized. Almost every¬ 
where in this quarter, where the warehouses 
and depots remained closed until after mid¬ 
night, girls could be found at street corners, 
offering their services. The sight of them 
brought a bitter humiliation to Lampieur. 
He pictured Leontine busy like these girls 
with her low occupation, and he suddenly felt 
a sort of jealously which irritated him against 
her and made her hateful. 

“Psst! Psst! Hey]” called a woman 
who had noticed him from across the street. 

Lampieur did not seem to hear. He took 
a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and, leaning 
217 


The Hounded Man 


his back against a wall, he smoked with bent 
head. What did he hope for from Leon- 
tine? What did he want to say to her? 
She disgusted him now. . . . She was 

too much like those dreary prostitutes who 
walked the pavements, offering themselves to 
the first comer, without distinction. He was 
almost nauseated, and the thought came to 
him that he was wrong not to go away and 
try somewhere else to begin life again alone. 

That was his plan. Feeling with thick fin¬ 
gers in his vest pocket, he touched the money 
he had put there. The touch of the bills 
reminded him of his crime and of the fright¬ 
ful moments he had just passed through. 
Lampieur stiffened. He regained all his 
roughness. Then he turned his thoughts to 
Leontine, brought up a thousand memories 
of her, and gave himself up to their spell. 
These memories still retained their charm 
for him. They enabled him to glimpse a 
possible existence, if Leontine would agree 
to flee with him. Had she not suggested it 
218 


The Hounded Man 


to him? He was eager to go. The money 
hidden in his pocket would help him. But 
Leontine had to accompany him. Without 
her, he was good for nothing. . . . He 

suffered too much. He worried too much. 
The day he had gone through weighed on 
him. He could not have found courage to 
go through another. It was too much for 
his strength. He would have given up 
everything rather than have to go again 
through the agony of that frightful day. 

Still Leontine did not appear, and Lam- 
pieur wondered anxiously if she had not al¬ 
ready put into executon herself the plan he 
had in mind. The thought appalled him. 
He pulled himself together, and, throwing 
away his cigarette, mechanically lit another 
and walked across the street. . . . 

There was a bar a little farther up. Lam- 
pieur searched it with his eyes, then began 
again to walk about and to look in every bar 
he passed. Thus wandering, stopping at 
the door of even the smallest saloons, Lam- 
219 


The Hounded Man 


pieur covered the whole quarter. As fast as 
his illusions abandoned him, his thoughts of 
Leontine gained on him, and he blamed him¬ 
self bitterly for having caused her to go away 
and leave him. 

That she was like girls Lampieur passed, 
and as debased as they, no longer caused him 
shame. His righteous disgust was forgotten. 
He had no more jealously nor anger. What 
mattered all her depravity? He was ready 
to excuse it, tolerate it, welcome it, and never 
refer to it. It was by his own great fault 
that Leontine had resumed her old life. He 
accused himself with severity, and admitted 
his guilt. 

At last, accusing himself of a thousand sins 
and magnifying them as though on purpose, 
Lampieur lost all control of himself. He 
looked everywhere for Leontine, in vain. 
She was nowhere. Wherever he went, near 
the hotels, around the saloons, here, or there, 
girls approached him, but not the girl he 
sought. He waved them away without a 
220 


The Hounded Man 


word. Soon, having passed him more than 
once, they recognized him and did not insist. 
They let him follow his grotesque patrol. 
They lost interest in him and Lampieur, see¬ 
ing them move away, told himself with in¬ 
finite distress that no one would ever be 
interested in him again. 

This brought his sense of being lost to its 
height. It hurt him to feel so absolutely 
alone. Why persist? Lampieur gave up 
all determination 5 he walked the streets, 
entered bars, sat down, got up, wandered on. 
Midnight, then the half hour struck, stores 
opened up, but Lampieur noticed nothing. 

At times, however, as he opened saloon 
doors, he saw all sorts of people gathered 
around tables, emptying steins. He could 
not understand why these people should be 
there. Why did they stare at him as he 
walked to the bar and swallowed at a gulp 
the little glass of rum he ordered? He sus¬ 
pected them of knowing where Leontine was. 
Then he drank a second little glass . . . 

221 


The Hounded Man 


a third little glass . . . then he moved 

to the next place, sure in his mind that every¬ 
one knew where the girl was, that he was be¬ 
ing purposely kept in ignorance. As this con¬ 
viction became rooted in his mind, he came to 
the conclusion that he must still go through a 
thousand pains before meeting Leon tine. 
The thought that she was only a woman of 
the streets became stronger. He made no 
effort to evade it. Rather he dwelt on it 
with a sort of sharp distress and shameful 
pleasure. In his eyes, no shame was great 
enough. Didn’t these people know that? 
Lampieur gazed long at them. He counted 
them. They were workmen of the Market, 
to whom Leontine had certainly offered her¬ 
self, like the others. 

The image of the girl mingling with all 
these men humiliated him; it wounded him, 
and he wanted it to humiliate and wound him 
all the more. Thus, he felt, when he met 
her he would have earned the right to leave 
with her, and lead another life. . . . 

222 


The Hounded Man 


Disgust, abasement, shame—he must know 
them all. His cowardice made them all 
necessary and, little by little, he accepted 
them, like some strange necessity of life and 
death from which there is no escape. 


223 


Chapter 24 

LL night, striving to degrade himself, 



r\ ending by finding a somber satisfaction 
in the result, Lampieur wandered about the 
Market saloons and got himself very drunk. 
The thought that, having undergone the 
most cruel trials for Leontine, he would find 
her at last, exalted him, and presently took 
on the force of a certainty in his mind. 
Lampieur was sure of meeting Leontine 
again. This idea born of his drunkenness, 
seemed natural to him, and sustained him. 

But what trials must he still bear before 
meeting the girl and persuading her to flee 
with him? He did not know. It was a 
matter between his conscience and a sort of 
far-away Justice, vaguely ready, according 
to circumstances, to be moved or to remain 
unbending. Lampieur placed himself in its 


224 


The Hounded Man 


hands. He accepted in advance the suffer¬ 
ing that might be assigned to him. This bar¬ 
gain by which he advanced to meet the most 
dismal humiliations, reassured him and led 
him to believe he would in the end receive 
his due. 

Leontine thus became for him the symbol 
of expiation and deliverance, and he clung 
to it all the more firmly for his desire to 
leave the quarter and escape the police. He 
wanted nothing else. Above all, at this 
moment, the hope that Leontine would help 
him succeed in his plan encouraged him to 
expect its success. Nevertheless it was get¬ 
ting late, the dawn was making a vague ap¬ 
proach, and Leontine, by remaining out of 
sight, prevented Lampieur from starting 
anything. 

He advanced painfully through the streets, 
making his way among the porters. He was 
bumped. He was jostled. He did not get 
angry. He effaced himself. He gave way 
each time and then started again, with halting 
225 


The Hounded Man 


steps, avoiding the silent crowds gathered 
around the tall carts, unloading them. 

Thus advancing, Lampieur frequently 
crossed from sidewalk to sidewalk and, being 
drunk, he made astonishing zig-zags at times, 
and knew it. But that did not prevent his 
thoughts from returning at once to Leon- 
tine, and assuring him that he would find 
her. His need to see her again was 
strengthened as it became a drunk’s fixed 
idea. It was enough for him. It guided 
him toward her, despite his staggering, and 
he had no more doubts when, at the end of 
an extravagant series of wanderings and de¬ 
tours, he recognized the little bar near the 
bakery where he went every morning. 

It was there that Leontine used to wait for 
him. Lampieur entered. He looked down 
at the group of poor people around him and, 
with a drunkard’s swaying walk he simply 
rounded two or three tables and found him¬ 
self miraculously at a last one, at which sat 
Leontine before a cup of coffee. 

226 


The Hounded Man 


“Here I am,” said Lampieur. 

He took a chair and, dropping into it, 
yawned and asked: 

“Want anything else to drink? 55 

“Where did you come from? 55 asked 
Leontine in wonder. 

“Over there, 55 he answered. “From the 
Market. . . , 55 

She rose. 

“Waiter! 55 called Lampieur. 

“No, I paid, 55 she murmured. “Let’s get 
out of here. We couldn’t be quiet here. 55 

Lampieur followed Leontine out of the 
room obediently, without feeling the slight¬ 
est astonishment at his providential meeting. 
It seemed to him perfectly natural. Only, 
once in the street, his exaltation fell, and he 
dared not make a step for fear the people 
who had threatened to call the police during 
the night had done so. 

“Quick! Quick!” cried Leontine. 

She drew Lampieur by the sleeve, and 
added in a very low voice: 

227 


The Hounded Man 


“You mustn’t go back to your place, now.” 

“I suspected it,” he answered. “They 
went for the cops?” 

Leontine turned away. 

“All right! All right!” he said. “I 
know.” 

He hastened as best he could to obey the 
girl and, walking at her side, he confided: 

“I’ve got the money. Get me? All 
we’ve got to do is to take a room in a hotel 
until tonight. . . .Do you know a 

hotel? I’ve got to talk to you.” 

“About what?” she asked, still guiding 
Lampieur. 

He explained: 

“I’ve got to talk to you, see . . . be¬ 
cause of the money. . . .” 

“But I don’t know any hotel,” Leontine 
protested. “Besides, I’m going. I can’t 
stay with you.” 

“Why?” 

“No ... I only wanted to warn you 
that it was better to get out, and never come 
228 


The Hounded Man 


back,” stammered the girl. “Let me go, 
now. Go away, alone. . . . You’ve 

still got time. . . 

“No chance,” muttered Lampieur. “I 
won’t go alone. . . .” 

“You’re crazy!” 

“I can’t do it,” he said. 

The dawn, illuminating the grey house 
fronts and the roofs, was growing. On the 
store fronts, the walls, the doors, it crudely 
revealed mud stains, holes in the plaster, a 
thousand drawings and coarse inscriptions, 
and each object struck by its fresh light 
seemed to fade before it. 

Lampieur had a moment of horrible 
lucidity. 

“They’ll come,” he declared. “They’ll 
get me.” 

“You’ve got to run!” urged Leontine. 

“With you?” 

“Go!” 

He shook his head, still half drunk: 

“I thought you’d have pity,” he mur- 
229 


The Hounded Man 


mured in a plaintive voice. “I thought you’d 
go with me. . . .” 

Leontine answered. “I couldn’t.” 

“Well, all right,” said Lampieur, staring 
darkly before him, but without moving a 
hand’s breadth from the direction in which 
Leontine walked. 

Where was she going? He didn’t care. 
For the moment his only hope was in Leon¬ 
tine, and he was determined not to leave her 
for an instant. Nothing else mattered. He 
told himself he would soften her at last, 
that she would take pity on him. She was 
not a bad girl. She would give in. She 
would presently agree to go with him. Why 
did she seem not to want to? Lampieur 
would not admit her sincerity. He felt 
there was something in Leontine’s ways that 
he could not explain, that he could not under¬ 
stand. . . . He was no longer drunk, 

however. . . . 

He walked straight, he recognized the 
230 


The Hounded Man 


street, he knew where it led, and he strove 
to pierce Leontine’s purpose. 

Suddenly she stopped. 

“Over there!” she said. 

Lampieur made out in the crowd several 
men with round hats, who emerged from a 
bar and were coming toward them. 

“Don’t stop,” whispered Lampieur to 
Leontine. “We’ll pass them as though 
there was nothing the matter.” 

“It’s they,” she murmured. “I saw them 
in the bar once before during the night. 
. . . They knew your name. ... I 

heard them ask the bartender before you 
came in.” 

“Go ahead ... go ahead. . . .” 

he commanded. “Get to the edge of the 
sidewalk. They won’t see me behind you. 
All we have to do is not show we know 
they’re looking for me, and pretend we’re 
talking.” 

“I’m afraid,” Leontine confessed. 

Lampieur, digging his hands into his 
231 


The Hounded Man 

pockets, started. Still, he added in a surly 
voice: 

“If you hadn’t stopped to argue, we 
wouldn’t have got into this. Ah! By God! 
If they don’t pick me up, I’ll be lucky.” 

“We haven’t any choice,” groaned Leon- 
tine. 

“Go ahead!” he scolded. 

They made a few steps in this way, watch¬ 
ing with a horrible sense of fear the slightest 
movements of the detectives, and, the closer 
they came, the less hope they had of being 
able to escape their vigilance. 

Lampieur made a mournful figure as 
he hugged the walls: he shook, his face 
was of a frightful pallor, and his eyes, 
below the soft peak of his cap, strove in 
vain to conceal the terror with which they 
shone. 

“They’ll recognize me,” said Leontine. 
“They’re going to recognize me. . . .” 

Lampieur gave a long sigh. 

“Look out! Now’s the time when we 
232 


The Hounded Man 


pass or we’re done. If they see us coming, 
that’s the end. . . 

“Swine!” said Leontine. 

They were within fifteen or twenty feet 
of the detectives, who seemed to be strolling 
innocently between the shops which were 
opening up on either side. Clerks were tak¬ 
ing down the shutters from store windows. 
A little servant was going to the dairy with 
an empty bottle. Others carried the morn¬ 
ing papers, bread, provisions. 

“Softly, softly,” said Lampieur between 
his teeth. 

The detectives had not yet noticed them. 
The three of them held the center of the 
street, throwing slow questioning glances to 
right and left. 

“Ah!” whispered Lampieur. “They’re 
getting out of the way of the rig.” 

It was a night hack on its way back to its 
station, which, by chance, obliged the detec¬ 
tives to move aside for it to pass. Lampieur 
and Leontine quickened their steps behind 
233 


The Hounded Man 


the hack. They hurried forward. Each 
thought himself already out of danger. 

Lampieur, feeling a tap on the shoulder, 
turned. 

“What! What!” he stammered. 

Leontine called him. 

“You too,” said a voice. “Stay where you 
are. And don’t make a scene!” 

Lampieur let himself be handcuffed with¬ 
out resistance, then he was roughly pushed 
forward. He dared not look at Leontine 
who walked at his side, weeping silently. 

THE END. 


234 





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